Research on mental health among Latin Americans in the United States remains inconclusive in part because prior studies have not adequately distinguished immigrant generation and national origin differences. To examine how depressive symptoms evolve from adolescence through midlife among U.S. Latin Americans, we analyzed five waves of data from 3525 self-identified Hispanic/Latino participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Depressive symptoms were measured at five time points using a psychometrically validated four-item CES-D scale, with missing data handled via multiple imputation. We estimated depressive symptom trajectories using mixed-effects Poisson models specifying a quartic polynomial age function and random intercepts to examine variation across immigrant generations and regions of origin. Results show that first-generation immigrants consistently exhibit lower depressive symptoms than third-plus-generation counterparts, with second-generation respondents in between. Social support and friendship ties help account for generational differences, with the second-generation advantage attenuating after adjustment and the first-generation advantage persisting. Analyses by origin group reveal a persistent Puerto Rican disadvantage and a stable Cuban advantage relative to Mexican-origin respondents; these differences persist after adjustment for race, generation, and socioeconomic status and in sensitivity analyses accounting for education coding, census region, and survey wave. Linear mixed-effects sensitivity models confirm the substantive conclusions. Overall, the results underscore how structural context, origin-specific reception histories, and relational resources shape mental health within the U.S. Latin American population, highlighting the importance of disaggregated analyses and life course-sensitive approaches for understanding depressive symptom disparities.
Christensen et al. (2026) studied this question.