Studies | Child Immigration and Developmental Psychiatry

Study I--(current study; ongoing analysis and manuscript preparation)
It is estimated that 19 % of children in US schools speak a language other than English at home (US census 2000), AKA "language minority children". This represents an increase of 28% in a decade. Almost half of these children are US-Born, and most speak Spanish at home.

It is also estimated that 8.4% of the children in US schools are Limited English Proficient (LEP) children (a subgroup of the "children who speak a language other than English at home"), (US Department of Education study, 2003), an increase of 72% over a decade. Almost half of these children were US-Born, and 77% spoke Spanish at home.

This National Institute of Health-sponsored longitudinal study of 228 bilingual Latino kindergarten children in the Boston Public Schools focuses on psychological adaptations and childhood psychopathology as predicted by initial language competence and language demand in bilingual children. The study takes a comprehensive, multivariate approach to the study of child, family, sociocultural and school factors, psychopathology, and potentially relevant protective factors.

Elucidating these crucial areas of resilience and vulnerability will hopefully guide future research on mechanisms linking language and adaptations/psychopathology, thereby shaping design of new empirically-based treatments for children at risk, with potentially important implications for young Latino children at risk for long-term academic and social failure due to language deficits and mental health problems.

TIMELINE:

June 2003: Research design complete, Human Subject Review

October 2003: Phase I data collection begins in the Boston Public School for the Child Language and Developmentat Psychiatry research.

June 2004: Data coding and data entering

October 2004:16 Boston Public Schools and 230 children have participated in the study, making ours one of the largest child mental health programs of any kind (service or research) in the BPS.

June 2005: Data analysis and manuscript preparation

October 2005: Phase II data collection on children and their families, teachers and classrooms.