The Impact of Family Relationships and Communication on the Mental Health of Urban Immigrant Adolescents

This study examined whether family relationship quality and communication with parents during stressful situations were associated with mental health among urban immigrant adolescents. Guided by Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional model of stress and coping, I used secondary data from the Stress and Learning Study, which surveyed 78 immigrant adolescents in Chicago Public Schools (ages 11 to 14) at two time points approximately 7-9 months apart. Family functioning was assessed with the Family Relationship Scale, parent focused communication during stress was assessed with binary items from the Response to Stress Questionnaire, and mental health was assessed with Youth Self Report Total Problems and Externalizing scores. Correlations and linear regressions were conducted to test whether stronger family relationships predicted more frequent communication during stress and whether communication predicted later externalizing problems when accounting for baseline symptoms. Family relationship quality showed a small, nonsignificant positive association with parent communication, and communication did not significantly predict Time 2 externalizing problems after controlling for Time 1 externalizing scores. In contrast, baseline externalizing symptoms were a strong predictor of later symptoms, highlighting substantial stability in behavior problems over time. Overall, findings suggest that within this relatively low risk sample, individual differences in family relationships and stress related communication were not sufficient to explain change in mental health across seven to nine months, although patterns were consistent with theory and point to important directions for future work with immigrant families.