ORIGINAL ARTICLE Association between maternal and child mental health among US Latinos: variation by nativity, ethnic subgroup, and time in the USA Rheanna Platt 1 & Nomi S. Weiss-Laxer 2 & Timothy B. Creedon 3,4 & Maria Jose Sanchez Roman 5,6 & Esteban V. Cardemil 7 & Benjamin Cook 8 Received: 29 December 2018 /Accepted: 5 June 2019 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract Few studies have examined the association between maternal and youth mental health among US Latinos, or its variation by nativity, country of origin, ethnic subgroup, and time in the mainland US. Using 2007–2014 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data linking Latino youth (N = 15,686 aged 5–17 years) and their mothers, we estimated multivariate models of the relationship between probable maternal mental illness (a composite of measures) and youth mental health impairment (Columbia Impairment Scale). Children of mothers with probable mental illness were more than three times as likely to have impairment as children of mothers without mental illness (p < 0.01). In adjusted models, there was an 8.5-point (95% CI 5.1, 11.8) increased prevalence of child impairment associated with mother’ s probable mental illness among mainland US–born youth and mothers and a 6.0-point (95% CI 3.7, 8.3) increased prevalence among US-born youth of foreign/island-born mothers. There was no significant differ- ence in the prevalence of youth impairment associated with maternal mental illness when both youth and mother were born outside of the mainland US. For the Puerto Rican subgroup, the association between maternal and youth mental health was greatest among island-born mothers and mainland US–born youth; for the Mexican subgroup, the link was strongest among US- born mothers and youth. While there were large point differences between those groups, the difference was not statistically significant. This study suggests a protective effect of island/foreign-born nativity on symptom association between Latino mothers and children. Considerations for future research and practice stemming from this finding are discussed. Keywords Maternal mental health . Intergenerational mental health . Latino . Immigration Introduction The deleterious impact of maternal mental health problems on child health is well acknowledged (Goodman et al. 2011). The intergenerational transmission of mental health problems is complex, with many contributing factors, including genetic liability (Stein et al. 2014), parenting practices, and socioeco- nomic status (Pearson et al. 2013). For immigrant families, * Rheanna Platt rplatt1@jhmi.edu 1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University/Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, 5500 East Lombard St, Room 1214, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA 2 Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA 3 The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA 4 IBM Watson Health, Cambridge, MA, USA 5 Health Equity Research Lab, Cambridge Health Alliance, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, USA 6 Milken School of Public Health, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA 7 Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, USA 8 Health Equity Research Lab, Cambridge Health Alliance, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, USA Archives of Women's Mental Health https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-019-00982-4