The Need for Professional Translation and Interpretation in School Districts

The language barrier prevents Latino students from experiencing academic success, and prevents Latino parents from participating in their children's education. Through a review of journal articles, research projects, doctoral dissertations, legislation, and books, this project studies the benefits and dangers of various methods of translating and interpreting in the education system, including issues created by language barriers in schools, common methods of translating and interpreting, and legislation addressing language barriers and education. The project reveals that schools use various methods to translate and interpret, including relying on children, school staff and machine translation, although such methods are often problematic and inaccurate. The project also reveals that professional translation and interpretation are superior to the various non-professional methods.

Mental health literacy of Latina women in the United States for their school-aged children

Despite known mental health (MH) disparities faced by Latino children relative to children from other minority groups of similar socioeconomic status (SES), little is known about how Latina mothers make MH decisions for their children. The present study examined links between Latina mothers' mental health literacy (MHL), including the recognition of and response to child psychiatric symptoms, and maternal acculturation factors as well as interpersonal violence (IPV) related symptomatology. Participants were 80 Latina mothers from Denver, Colorado and Modesto, California with at least one child between the ages of 8-12 years. Mothers were presented vignettes depicting child internalizing and externalizing disorders as well as interviewed about their help seeking behaviors. Maternal acculturation was not related to identification of disorders, but was related to more symptoms recognized for child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Acculturation predicted use of formal source of care for child internalizing and externalizing disorder. Women demonstrated a preference for informal source of care, with the exception of IPV-related child symptoms, where women demonstrated a preference for formal source of care. IPV-related symptoms did not moderate the relationship between acculturation and MHL. The relationship between maternal acculturation, IPV related symptomatology and their combined effect on MHL for child psychiatric disorders are discussed.