New Study Finds Informal Mentors Can Blunt Discrimination’s Toll on Latino/a Teens

Introduction

Discrimination takes a documented toll on Latino/a adolescents, showing up in higher rates of depression, anxiety, and behavioral problems. Kuperminc and colleagues (2026) set out to test whether something as ordinary as an informal mentor, a trusted adult outside the immediate family, might alleviate that toll. Drawing on resilience theory, the researchers examined whether mentors work primarily by directly counteracting harm (a compensatory effect) or by buffering the relationship between discrimination and distress (a protective effect), and whether these patterns differ for girls and boys.

Methods

The team followed 544 Latino/a youth from a metropolitan Atlanta school district across 11 survey waves spanning seven years, from middle school (average age 13) into early adulthood. Youth reported on internalizing problems (like anxiety and depression) and externalizing problems (like rule-breaking and aggression) throughout the study. At Wave 9, when participants were roughly 15 to 18, researchers added measures of everyday discrimination, whether the youth had an informal mentor, and, for those who did, how strong that mentoring relationship felt. Statistical growth models tracked how these factors related to symptom trajectories through Wave 11.

Results

Mentoring mattered, but how it mattered depended on gender and on what kind of problem was being measured. For girls, simply having a mentor was tied to fewer internalizing symptoms overall, and girls who described a genuinely strong mentor relationship saw their anxiety and depression symptoms decline over time, even when they faced high discrimination; girls without that strong bond did not see the same protection. For boys, a strong mentor relationship was linked to fewer internalizing symptoms at the outset, though it didn’t clearly change their trajectory over time. Across both genders, having a mentor, and especially having a strong mentor relationship, decreased the link between discrimination and rule-breaking or aggressive behavior, but that protection seemed to hold only at moderate discrimination levels. When discrimination was severe, the buffering effect weakened.

Discussion

The authors interpret this pattern as evidence that mentoring can work through both routes, but not identically for everyone. Relationship quality, not just having someone to call a mentor, did the heavier lifting. That fits a growing body of mentoring research suggesting that closeness and consistency matter more than the mere presence of a caring adult. The findings also suggest limits: a good mentor relationship could not fully protect youth facing the most severe levels of discrimination, and it worked somewhat differently for internalizing versus externalizing struggles.

Implications for Mentoring Programs

Programs serving Latino/a youth should think beyond simply connecting a young person with any available adult. The strength and quality of the relationship appears central to whether mentoring translates into real protection against the effects of discrimination, particularly for girls’ emotional well-being and for curbing risk behavior in both genders. Programs may also want to consider that mentoring alone will not fully offset the effects of severe or chronic discrimination and works best as one piece of a broader support system.

Read the full article here