Talk:Hispanic paradox

Miscategorized

I don't think it's correct to categorize this article as a "paradox". --Popperipopp 10:26, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Self contradictory

The anonymously posted last paragraph essentially ignores the findings reported in footnotes 1 and 2. Not sure what to do since I can't contact the author. Patience is requested. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwinkel (talk • contribs) 04:08, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Removed last paragraph

I don't mean to be antisocial but since I had no way to contact that person ... If you come back please check the footnotes (1-4) and if you still decide this is purely a matter of acculturation feel free to restore it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwinkel (talk • contribs) 21:35, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Recommend deleting reference to birth trauma as cause of Hispanic Paradox

Because I am new to editing Wikipedia articles, I'm not comfortable editing the page itself, but I recommend deleting the idea that birth trauma is the cause of the Hispanic Paradox. I suggest deleting this source as irrelevant and misleading:

^ Munchausen Obstetrics http://www.math.missouri.edu/~rich/MGM/birthUSA3.txt

Footnote 1 contains the main source for understanding the Hispanic Paradox, which is a Science now article. We can thus delete the link to the "archived" site since it conains a link to the birth trauma theory and is doing more than being an archived site, so I recommend deleting:

archived at: http://www.math.missouri.edu/~rich/MGM/birthUSA1.txt

Foodnote 2 has the same problem. A perfectly accssible link to a scientific article is called "formerly" even though it is available, and a link is put to an archived site, which again contains the birth trauma information.

The writers who describe the Hispanic Paradox propose note that Hispanics living in the US have better mental health than would be expected given their SES. This is a phhenomena much larger than hispanics per se, and has been discussed in many places, such as in a recent Harvard Magazine article. The main idea is however cited in the Bowers' ScienceNews articles, which is "immigrants' health deteriorates with assimilation to U.S. society". Immigrants born outside the US have the best mental health, followed by children of immigrants born in the US. By the third generation, rates of poor mental health reach the low levels of European Americans who have lived in the country for generations. The cause appears to be associated with the American lifestyle, as suggested by Arthur Kleinman, author of Culture and Depression, and its focus on individualist achievement at the expense of family relations.

I agree with the "miscategorized" comment, but note that the term Hispanic Paradox is used. Ideally this topic would be subsumed under a page about immigrant health.

Caldwell-Harris (talk) 23:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Regarding most recent suggestions

1) the munchausen obstetrics article (footnote 4) is hardly irrelevant given footnotes 2 and 3, which clearly show that the decisive factor in the "paradox" is place of birth. The logical question given this observation is, what is it about US obstetrics which might affect such socioeconomic indicators? Given the widely understood and accepted phenomenon that animals readily imprint their earliest experiences, it stands to reason that needless trauma should be avoided around the neonatal period. Follow the links in the article and you'll see that this lesson is apparently not taught in american medical schools. Less developed countries like mexico, and regions which support professional midwives like europe, naturally tend to follow a less interventionist approach which is less likely to be imprinted as traumatic by the infant, assuming millions of years of evolution are to be trusted.

Assuming there is something to this theory, it would also explain the observed convergence to statistical "normalcy" of successive generations, as native-born parents' own imprinted trauma would probably adversely affect family dynamics and their native-born children's socialization. The handwaving argument about acculturation to the "american lifestyle" is not even a well stated hypothesis, much less a testable one. In contrast, the specific phenomenon of birth imprinting is universally understood to occur in animals, although hardly ever raised in the human context. Unresolved imprinting issues can have life-long and multigenerational impacts, as any neonatal psychologist will tell you. (http://www.birthpsychology.com)

2) footnotes 2 and 3 are archived because sciencenews.org seems to be reorganizing their web site. At the moment footnote 2 is publically available, but footnote 3 is not. At other times I've noticed that neither article is public.

3) it is unlikely that this hypothesis will receive a fair hearing in a mainstream medical journal, given the reluctance of even sciencenews to address the issue head on. Yet it is being raised in numerous places around the net by well credentialed scientists and obstetricians, as the references in footnote 4 demonstrate. It should not be necessary to point out that this hypothesis, if proven, has the potential to provoke a huge scandal in american medicine and beyond, as the social ramifications sink in with policymakers and the public. Medical/institutional conflicts of interest are quite likely to eclipse science and children's human rights if this debate is confined to conventional academic circles, as can be readily seen to have occurred in the case of circumcision (http://www.math.missouri.edu/~rich/MGM/primer.html) Thus the need for an impartial hearing in other media, such as wikipedia.

--Rwinkel (talk) 20:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Incorporate external references

Reference [4] is an "excerpt from a letter to a legislator", presumably written by the page creator, Rich Winkel, who is listed as a Systems Analyst at the University Department of Mathematics (http://www.math.missouri.edu/personnel/other/winkelr.html). While it may contain authoritative sources, by itself - unpublished, not peer-reviewed - it is hardly authoritative and needs to substantiate what appears as original research. I suggest extracting the actual references out of this letter and including them on this page. I have not made the change yet, respecting the judgement of wikiuser Rwinkel who left the previous comment and appears to be the same as the creator of the document [4]. Zapiens (talk) 19:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Go for it!!

Please feel free. You might also find the following useful for a more birds-eye view of the issue:

http://www.math.missouri.edu/~rich/MGM/wiki.txt

Of course the "hispanic paradox" is more properly seen as only one empirical facet of the much larger issue, so this entire page needs reconstruction and incorporation into a larger framework. --Rwinkel (talk)

More context for this issue

Democracy Now did an excellent piece on the role of early childhood experiences in the rise of numerous syndromes which are pathologized by medicine and society. Unfortunately they didn't go back far enough (to perinatal experiences) or address the issue of medicine's role in perpetuating and spreading these problems in society. But it's a good start:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/24/dr_gabor_mat_on_the_stress

Rwinkel (talk) 19:40, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Research shows child rearing practices of distant ancestors foster morality, compassion in kids

http://newsinfo.nd.edu/news/16829-research-shows-child-rearing-practices-of-distant-ancestors-f/

--Rwinkel (talk) 12:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Check out this horror show. A mailing list for ob-gyn's detailing how they use cytotec (a drug approved for gastric ulcers, which was discovered to cause miscarriages) to force delivery on demand. These people have lost their minds.

http://www.sciencebasedbirth.com/Citations%20or%20text%2002/Cytotec_EmailsDocs_1990s.htm

We should be outraged.

Rwinkel (talk) 11:57, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Expansion of the Scope

The Hispanic Paradox is an important health phenomenon, and though the existing article explains some aspects of it, I propose to expand upon the existing article. I plan on expanding the article and organizing it into categories that will explain in detail several aspects of the paradox. Specifically, I will go into greater detail about health outcomes (i.e. morbidity and mortality) existing in the Hispanic population of the United States. I would like to expand upon the "salmon bias hypothesis" and the "healthy migrant effect" that are mentioned in the current article. I will also add to the section to discuss residential segregation and the "barrio advantage." I would like to expand upon the belief that there is actually no Hispanic Paradox in existence. Lastly, I will add a section that compares Hispanic health indicators to those of other minority/immigrant populations in the United States to give the article a broader perspective of the issue. I will be looking at the resources already listed on the discussion page for this article, but any resources or additional feedback on my proposed edit will be welcomed. I look forward to expanding this entry. Mschweickart (talk) 03:31, 20 October 2011 (UTC)Mschweickart

IMHO, any edit needs to at least acknowledge the importance of the birth imprint wrt health outcomes. Throwing away empirical evidence with a sound theoretical foundation makes no sense. Rwinkel (talk) 06:13, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Response to Recent Deletion

As far as empirical evidence, Mschweickart seems to have drawn her evidence with regard to residential segregation from two of the most influential scholars in the field of sociology including Douglas Massey and John Milton Yinger, who have both previously served as presidents of the American Sociological Association. Thus the deletion of this section of the article is ill-judged and the content of this section should be added back to the article. FrancescaSchley (talk) 03:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)