Self-silencing (or the suppression of expressing one’s thoughts, feelings, and needs) can have a negative impact on the mental health of women, from depression to disordered eating behaviors. The authors examined the relationship between self-silencing and disordered eating as well as intuitive eating. The authors also explored whether emotional awareness would moderate these relationships because conflicts over expressiveness are associated with emotional problems and eating disorders. The sample comprised 140 college women (52% White; 36% Black) under the age of 24 from a midwestern urban university. Their results revealed that emotional awareness moderated the relationships between self-silencing and disordered eating and intuitive eating. Specifically, when there were lower levels of emotional awareness, self-silencing with disordered eating and intuitive eating were unrelated; however, with higher levels of emotional awareness together with more self-silencing, participants presented with more disordered eating and less intuitive eating. The findings highlight the importance of supporting women’s emotional awareness in conjunction with their expressiveness of thoughts, feelings, and needs to increase intuitive eating and decrease disordered eating.

This study examined the relations among acculturation, domestic violence, and mental health in 62 married refugee women from Somalia. Refugees from Somalia constituted the largest group of refugees entering the United States in 2005, and little is known about the presence of domestic violence in this group. The results showed that women who reported greater ability to speak English also reported more experiences of partner psychological abuse and physical aggression. Experiences of more psychological abuse and physical aggressions also predicted more psychological distress. Implications for future research and psychological services are addressed.

This article describes the development and the initial psychometric evaluation of the Social Issues Advocacy Scale in two studies. In the first study, an exploratory factor analysis (n = 278) revealed a four-factor scale, accounting for 71.4% of the variance, measuring different aspects of social issue advocacy: Political and Social Advocacy, Confronting Discrimination, Political Awareness, and Social Issue Awareness. The second study (n = 509) supported the structure. Results indicated excellent internal reliability and associations with another social advocacy scale, political interest, and multicultural empathy, but not with self-esteem and life satisfaction; all of which provided initial evidence of construct and discriminant validity.

More than 100,000 Somali refugees have resettled in the United States, creating a need for additional research about mental health needs and premigration experiences that precede resettlement. The purpose of this study was to learn more about premigration traumatic experiences, the process of acculturation following resettlement, and the relationship between premigration trauma, acculturation, and mental health. Eighty Somali refugees from two mid-sized Midwestern cities participated. It was hypothesized that acculturation would mediate the relationship between premigration trauma and mental health symptoms. The results partially supported this hypothesis, dependent upon the dimension of acculturation included in the path analysis. Unexpected relationships among the various acculturation dimensions in the model (American cultural identity, English language competency, and American cultural competency) occurred with traumatic experiences, mental health symptoms, and time in the United States. We discuss implications and directions for future research, practice, advocacy, and training.