Citation

Peña JB, Zayas LH, Cabrera-Nguyen P, Vega WA. Am. J. Public Health 2012; 102(4): 664-671.

Affiliation

Juan B. Peña and Peter Cabrera-Nguyen are with the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, St Louis, MO. Luis H. Zayas is with the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and the Department of Psychiatry, Washington University. William A. Vega is with the School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2011.300344

PMID

22397348

Abstract

Objectives. We examined how US cultural involvement related to suicide attempts among youths in the Dominican Republic. Methods. We analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of youths attending high school in the Dominican Republic (n = 8446). The outcome of interest was a suicide attempt during the past year. The US cultural involvement indicators included time spent living in the United States, number of friends who had lived in the United States, English proficiency, and use of US electronic media and language. Results. Time lived in the United States, US electronic media and language, and number of friends who had lived in the United States had robust positive relationships with suicide attempts among youths residing in the Dominican Republic. Conclusions. Our results are consistent with previous research that found increased risk for suicide or suicide attempts among Latino youths with greater US cultural involvement. Our study adds to this research by finding similar results in a nonimmigrant Latin American sample. Our results also indicate that suicide attempts are a major public health problem among youths in the Dominican Republic.

Language: en