(PS13-D91) Improving COVID-19 Mental and Physical Health Outcomes Among Latinx Persons: Exploring the Interactive Effect of Acculturative Stress and Anxiety Sensitivity

Mental health concerns engendered during the height of COVID-19 continue elevated among Latinx persons to this day, including fear of COVID-19, anxiety, depression, and somatic disturbances such as fatigue symptoms. Drawing from prior non-COVID-19 related work, both social determinants of health and individual-level transdiagnostic cognitive processing factors are influential in identifying potential mechanisms of protection and intervention. One of the most prominent social determinants of health among Latinx persons is acculturative stress and separately, individual differences in anxiety sensitivity, or the fear of anxiety related symptoms may also be an important transdiagnostic factor to understanding pandemic-related mental and physical health among this population. Both acculturative stress and anxiety sensitivity are related to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and fear among Latinx persons and are related to one another, but theoretically and empirically distinguishable. A key limitation in the existing literature pertains to whether acculturative stress and anxiety sensitivity are each related to mental and physical health when considered concurrently. That is, the effects of acculturative stress and anxiety sensitivity when controlling for each other have not been directly explored among Latinx persons during the pandemic. Because both acculturative stress and anxiety sensitivity invoke distinct mechanisms designed to account for increased affective disturbance, it is important to determine the unique explanatory validity of these constructs relative to one another for pandemic related health problems as well as their synergistic potential for mitigating such outcomes. Thus, the current work aimed to explore the main and interactive effects of acculturative stress and anxiety sensitivity upon fear of COVID-19, anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms, and fatigue among a cohort of 181 Latinx adults (30.4% female, M_age = 34.1 years, SD = 8.20). Effects were evaluated after adjusting for years living in the U.S., COVID-19 impact, gender identity, education, work life distress and home life distress. Results demonstrated a main effect of acculturative stress and anxiety sensitivity upon fear of COVID-19, and somatic symptoms (ΔR² = .30, p < .001). Anxiety sensitivity evinced a main effect across all outcomes. Moreover, an interactive effect emerged for acculturative stress and anxiety sensitivity upon fear of COVID-19 alone (ΔR² = .30, p < .001). Overall, these results highlight both the unique and synergistic impact of acculturative stress and anxiety sensitivity upon COVID-19 related fear, somatic symptoms, fatigue severity, anxiety, and depression. This work has potential to inform emerging post-COVID-19 mental and physical health treatment by empirically documenting two prominent intervention mechanisms for the Latinx population specifically.