Ethnic Identity Among Arab Americans: An Examination of Contextual Influences and Psychological Well-Being

Existing theories and research have indicated that ethnic identity is crucial for ethnic minority young adults because ethnicity is an important component of their personal identity that is likely to influence various aspects of their development. Given the centrality of this construct, the overarching aim of the present study was to examine ethnic identity and psychological well-being among members of an ethnic group that have long been ignored in the psychological literature: Arab Americans. Specifically, the goals of the study were threefold. The first goal was to examine the association between multiple contextual factors (such as students’ perceptions of their parents’ style of parenting, family ethnic socialization, perceived discrimination, and generational status) and ethnic identity. The second goal was to explore the potential role of ethnic identity to promote psychological adjustment and well-being: self-esteem and depressive symptoms are indices of psychological functioning that were examined in the study. The final goal of the study was to examine whether ethnic identity can serve as a protective factor, mitigating the negative effects of discrimination on psychological well-being. Methods: Participants (N= 323) were recruited through advertisements and flyers placed on bulletin boards across the Wayne State University (WSU) campus and through announcements placed on WSU pipeline and on the Arab American Student Association as well as the Egyptian Student Association Facebook pages. All flyers included the online study website (surveymonkey.com) to allow students to access the survey and complete it. Inclusion criteria for participants were: being between the ages of 18 and 25 years, of Arab or Middle Eastern descent, living in the United States, and registered as a full-time or part-time student at Wayne State University. The survey consisted of a package of 7 batteries: Demographic Questionnaire, Familial Ethnic Socialization Measure (FESM), Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ), Perceived Ethnic Discrimination Questionnaire (PEDQ), Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and Center for Epidemiologic Studies – Depression Scale (CES-D Scale). Results: Pearson correlation analyses revealed that higher family ethnic socialization, authoritative parenting, authoritarian parenting, and lower generational status were all significantly associated with higher ethnic identity (r= .55, r=.51, r= .16, r=-.19, respectively). Further mediation analyses revealed that the relation between generational status and ethnic identity was fully mediated by family ethnic socialization. With respect to the relation between ethnic identity, perceived discrimination, and psychological well-being, results from the correlational analyses revealed that higher ethnic identity was associated with higher self-esteem (r = .45, p \u3c .01) and lower depressive symptoms (r = -.23, p \u3c .01) whereas perceived discrimination was associated with lower self-esteem (r = -.33, p \u3c .01) and higher depressive symptoms (r = .49, p \u3c .01). Finally, with respect to the potential protective role of ethnic identity, hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that ethnic identity moderated the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychological well-being. Specifically, perceived ethnic discrimination was negatively associated with self-esteem among participants with high ethnic identity; however, this relationship was even stronger among participants with low ethnic identity. Similarly, perceived ethnic discrimination was positively associated with depressive symptoms among participants with high ethnic identity; however, this relationship was even stronger among participants with low ethnic identity. Discussion: Our findings suggest that ethnic discrimination takes a toll on Arab American young adults, but, for this population, having a salient ethnic identity may have profound mental health benefits as ethnic identity may serve as valuable resource to help them deal with negative discriminatory experiences

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference