Latina Adolescent Resilience Rooted Within Cultural Strengths

Many Latina adolescents cope effectively with stress and experience positive physical and mental health in spite of high levels of poverty, discrimination, bicultural stress, and lowered expectations. Understanding the resilience inherent in how these young Latinas “make it” is a critical component of prevention and intervention. In this chapter, we review the Multiracial Feminist Framework to identify macrosystem, mesosystem, and microsystem factors within a resilience perspective as a way to frame our discussion of protective factors and cultural strengths. As can be seen from this review of protective factors, researchers are only beginning to understand the possible resources that may help young Latinas prevent depression and suicide, such as cultural strengths (familism, biculturalism/bilingualism, spirituality, feminist consciousness), school connectedness, and individual factors (self-esteem, coping, socioemotional development).