Mexico Essay -- Mexican Economy, Politics

Mexico is a country that has long been thought of as being an impoverished nation, with many more people who are among the poor that those who can be reasonably be considered to be wealthy. In recent years the Mexican people have had a dramatic change in their demographic outlook, with the largest change being in the fertility rate having dropped from 6.5 in the early 70’s to its current rate of 2.2 – easily the fastest rate of decline in the world today. With the importance of family to the Mexican people it is hard to imagine that these new rates will be sustainable in the future and will have dramatic negative implications for the economies of both Mexico and the United States as the population ages without replacement workers (McGoldrick, Giordano & Garcia-Preto, 2005; Sedano, 2008). The Mexican people are a people who find their roots amongst the Mayan, Aztecan and other Native American people. They also often share an ancestry with the European Spanish who conquered and settled much of what is today Mexico and the American Southwest. Their common language is Spanish and the majority of Mexican people follow the Catholic religion, which interestingly has changed in many ways to include many of the traditions and symbols of the other more ancient religions that were practiced before the Spanish conquest and the forced conversion of the natives. There still runs a deep attachment to â€Å"folk† medicine to cure ailments that are most likely caused by stress or other psychological means such as fright, the â€Å"evil eye† and even indigestion (McGoldrick, et. al., 2005). The family in Mexico is predominantly patriarchal in nature there is also a great deal of respect that is due the mothers of the family. Family types range from nuclea... ...e more educated parents (McCabe, 2002). It was discovered that such factors as income, perceptions of stigma, expectations of therapist directness, therapist-client match and even acculturation had no significant effect of the dropout rates. The greatest predictors were instead, parental belief in strict discipline in reaction to behavioral and emotional problems along with the perception of barriers to getting treatment (McCabe, 2002). While it is seen that acculturation may increase the ability of the client to seek assistance and that the acculturation of the parents may help them better understand the role of therapy in helping with behavioral and emotional problems will help more adolescents with these problems seek help it does was shown that improving the parents expectations and attitudes towards therapy may have beeter retention outcomes (McCabe, 2002).