Children of immigrants face unique socio-cultural challenges to accessing necessary resources to support their mental wellbeing. Specifically, these children may face difficulty addressing mental health concerns with their parents because of cultural differences/pressures that may cause hesitancy to accept and address mental health issues. Additionally, greater exposure to acculturative stress experienced by immigrant families predicts significantly more somatic, withdrawn, and anxious/depressed symptoms. Due to these unique challenges, our team aims to formulate and facilitate evidence-supported educational workshops that engage both child and parent of immigrant families in topics such as culture-specific stereotypes and how to discuss emotions in family settings. Normalizing discussion of these topics may help reduce the stigma that inhibits the conversation between parent and child in these immigrant families which prevent the child from accessing the resources needed to ameliorate their mental wellbeing.
Sanar Esmiel is a senior at Saint Louis University, graduating with a B.A. in Psychology this year. Moving forward, she will continue her education by pursuing a masters through an accelerated nursing program in the hopes to one day be a Nurse Practitioner in Psychiatry. Sanar is especially excited about the exponentially growing research surrounding the mental health of refugees and immigrants and hopes to work with them in the future. Outside of school, she is a passionate advocate for the unhoused community and enjoys contributing and working with local mutual aid organizations.
Elizabeth Fox is a senior majoring in Psychology at Saint Louis University. Some of her interests include volunteering and working with the children of battered women, intergenerational trauma, eating disorders, developmental psychology, and more. She is pursuing a career in Clinical Psychology with a focus on psychological trauma and disorders in adolescents.
Denise Gomez is currently a senior at Saint Louis University, majoring in Psychology with a minor in Spanish. After graduating, Denise will attend an accelerated nursing program with future hopes of earning her Masters as a Nurse Practitioner in Psychiatry/Mental Health and working with young adults with anxiety and mood disorders in partial hospitalization/intensive outpatient programs. A significant portion of her college experience was dedicated to Campus Kitchen, a service organization at SLU in which she currently fulfills the role of president. Through this organization, over 1,300 pounds of food that would otherwise go to waste are recovered every week and turned into about 400 meals for food-insecure populations in the local St. Louis community.
Amish is a senior at Saint Louis University pursuing a B.A. in Psychology on the pre-med track. Amish aspires to become a surgeon. Although he has not definitively decided on a specialty, Amish hopes to specialize in trauma, orthopedic, or cardiothoracic surgery. Aside from school, he is a musician of 13 years and has played in a number of ensembles. He enjoys partaking in woodworking, ceramics, volunteering at hospitals and Red Cross events, and training in Mixed Martial Arts. As you can see here, Amish is very skillful in fine arts and paired with his drive for the medical profession, he chose to become a surgeon to continue his passion for helping others with his love for hands-on activities.
Sanar, Elizabeth, Denise, and Amish would like to thank her faculty sponsor for their support of this project.