Acculturation and the lifetime risk of psychiatric and substance use disorders among hispanics

Between 1981 and 1995, approximately 5 million people from either Mexico, C uba, Central America, or South America immigrated to the United States. Som e regional studies have suggested that as Hispanic immigrants become accult urated to American society, their risk of mental illness increases sharply. This study examined the Lifetime risk of psychiatric and substance use dis orders among U.S. Hispanic subgroups and the specific role of nativity, par ental nativity, language preferences, and other sociodemographic characteri stics as risk factors for these disorders. The study used the National Como rbidity Survey (NCS), a national probability sample of 8098 U.S. adults age d 15 to 64. Selected DSM-III-R psychiatric diagnoses were collapsed into ei ght categories. When compared with non-Hispanic whites, Mexican-Americans w ere less likely to have any psychiatric disorder. After multivariate adjust ment, acculturation items predicted greater risk of having any DSM-III-R di sorders for Mexican-Americans and "other" Hispanics and greater risk of hav ing a substance abuse disorder for Puerto Ricans, among other significant r elationships. The results suggest that there is likely to be an increasing prevalence of psychiatric and substance use disorders among Hispanics that may be attributable to increasing levels of acculturation among the more th an 5 million recent immigrants from Latin America.