The relationship between cultural identification, emotional regulation, mental health and tobacco use and Native Americans

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This study used cultural identification, or the extent to which individual's view themselves as being involved with an identifiable cultural group along with their investment or stake in that particular group as a way of addressing the problem of finding meaningful categories in terms of predicting health outcomes for Native Americans. These groupings consist of White Identification, Native American Identification and an Integration of these identifications. These cultural identification groups were then used to predict both psychological and physical health outcomes. In the area of psychological health, both withholding of negative emotion and depression were studied; tobacco dependency and tobacco use were examined as a physical health outcome. A group of 218 Native Americans participated in the study. Results of the study indicated that White identification on the cultural identification measure did predict specific ways of regulating negative emotion. In addition, autonomous forms of regulating negative emotions did predict significant portions of the variance in depression scores. There were no significant results with either depression, or nicotine dependence or tobacco use and cultural identification with this sample; however, there was a significant predictive relationship between depression and tobacco dependence. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.