Mentalized Affectivity and its Role in Acculturative Adjustment and Well-Being

Author

Bassem Barada, CUNY City CollegeFollow

Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Sasha Rudenstine

Second Advisor

Elliot Jurist

Third Advisor

Diana Puñales

Keywords

immigration, acculturation, ethnic, culture, mentalized affectivity, emotion processing, psychiatric outcomes

Abstract

Immigration is a phenomenon that occurs on a global scale and continues to grow in prevalence to our present day. Therefore, acculturation remains an essential area of interest for the mental health field. Specifically, assessment of identification with either one’s ethnic culture or the dominant culture remains a robust way to capture acculturative adjustment (Chance, 2015). More recently, emotion regulation has emerged as an important construct in understanding wellbeing. Mentalized affectivity (MA) is an insight-based regulatory process that highlights the importance of understanding current emotional distress in the context of one’s past history (Jurist, 2005). The three dimensions of emotion identification, emotion processing, and emotion expression comprise MA. This dissertation attempted to explore the relationship between acculturative identification and MA on one hand, and psychiatric outcomes on the other. Our clinical sample (N = 308) for this study are immigrant clients who were seeking services at a community-based mental health clinic in Northern Manhattan, New York City (NYC). They completed self-report measures of acculturative identification, mentalized affectivity, and psychiatric symptoms of depression, anxiety, and somatization. Correlational analyses showed that both ethnic and dominant culture identification were inconsistently associated with different psychiatric outcomes. Various dimensions of mentalized affectivity were consistently linked to each of the three psychiatric outcomes, with the processing dimension showing the most promise. Further regression analysis reified the initial correlational analyses, with different acculturative identifications playing the role of a protective or risk factor against increased psychiatric symptoms. More importantly, MA was consistently protective against psychiatric symptoms, with the processing dimension playing a protective role against all three of depression, anxiety, and somatization.

Recommended Citation

Barada, Bassem, "Mentalized Affectivity and its Role in Acculturative Adjustment and Well-Being" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1181