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Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself?
While Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) continues to garner global attention, FGM/C-affected migrant communities, who are often racialized minorities in the U.S., face additional challenges which may impact their physical and mental health and well-being. It has been proposed that an overly...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10159850/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36599966 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00661-6 |
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author | Johnson-Agbakwu, Crista E. Michlig, Georgia J. Koukoui, Sophia Akinsulure-Smith, Adeyinka M. Jacobson, Danielle S. |
author_facet | Johnson-Agbakwu, Crista E. Michlig, Georgia J. Koukoui, Sophia Akinsulure-Smith, Adeyinka M. Jacobson, Danielle S. |
author_sort | Johnson-Agbakwu, Crista E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | While Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) continues to garner global attention, FGM/C-affected migrant communities, who are often racialized minorities in the U.S., face additional challenges which may impact their physical and mental health and well-being. It has been proposed that an overly narrow focus on the female genitalia or FGM/C status alone, while ignoring the wider social experiences and perceptions of affected migrant women, will result in incomplete or misleading conclusions about the relationship between FGM/C and migrant women’s health. A cross-sectional study was conducted across two waves of Somali and Somali Bantu women living in the United States, (n = 879 [wave 1], n = 654 [wave 2]). Socio-demographics, self-reported FGM/C status, perceived psychological distress, and self-reported FGM/C-related health morbidity was examined against self-reported experiences of everyday discrimination and perceived psychosocial support. In statistical models including age and educational attainment as potentially confounding socio-demographic variables, as well as self-reported FGM/C status, self-reported discrimination, and perceived psychosocial support, self-reported discrimination was the variable most strongly associated with poor physical health and psychological distress (i.e., FGM/C-related health morbidity and psychological distress), with greater perceived psychosocial support negatively associated with psychological distress, when controlling for all the other variables in the model. FGM/C status was not significantly associated with either outcome. Discrimination, more frequently reported among ‘No FGM/C’ (i.e., genitally intact or unmodified) women, was most frequently perceived as linked to religion and ethnicity. Our findings are consistent with views that discrimination drives negative outcomes. In this population, discrimination may include the ‘quadruple jeopardy’ of intersecting relationships among gender, race, religion, and migration status. We find that self-reported experiences of discrimination—and not FGM/C status per se—is associated with adverse physical and mental health consequences in our sample drawn from Somali migrant communities living in the United States, and that social support may help to mitigate these consequences. Our findings thus reinforce calls to better contextualize the relationship between FGM/C and measures of health and well-being among Somali women in the United States (regardless of their FGM/C status), taking psychosocial factors more centrally into account. Clinical Trials.Gov ID no. NCT03249649, Study ID no. 5252. Public website: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03249649 |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10159850 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101598502023-05-06 Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself? Johnson-Agbakwu, Crista E. Michlig, Georgia J. Koukoui, Sophia Akinsulure-Smith, Adeyinka M. Jacobson, Danielle S. Int J Impot Res Article While Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) continues to garner global attention, FGM/C-affected migrant communities, who are often racialized minorities in the U.S., face additional challenges which may impact their physical and mental health and well-being. It has been proposed that an overly narrow focus on the female genitalia or FGM/C status alone, while ignoring the wider social experiences and perceptions of affected migrant women, will result in incomplete or misleading conclusions about the relationship between FGM/C and migrant women’s health. A cross-sectional study was conducted across two waves of Somali and Somali Bantu women living in the United States, (n = 879 [wave 1], n = 654 [wave 2]). Socio-demographics, self-reported FGM/C status, perceived psychological distress, and self-reported FGM/C-related health morbidity was examined against self-reported experiences of everyday discrimination and perceived psychosocial support. In statistical models including age and educational attainment as potentially confounding socio-demographic variables, as well as self-reported FGM/C status, self-reported discrimination, and perceived psychosocial support, self-reported discrimination was the variable most strongly associated with poor physical health and psychological distress (i.e., FGM/C-related health morbidity and psychological distress), with greater perceived psychosocial support negatively associated with psychological distress, when controlling for all the other variables in the model. FGM/C status was not significantly associated with either outcome. Discrimination, more frequently reported among ‘No FGM/C’ (i.e., genitally intact or unmodified) women, was most frequently perceived as linked to religion and ethnicity. Our findings are consistent with views that discrimination drives negative outcomes. In this population, discrimination may include the ‘quadruple jeopardy’ of intersecting relationships among gender, race, religion, and migration status. We find that self-reported experiences of discrimination—and not FGM/C status per se—is associated with adverse physical and mental health consequences in our sample drawn from Somali migrant communities living in the United States, and that social support may help to mitigate these consequences. Our findings thus reinforce calls to better contextualize the relationship between FGM/C and measures of health and well-being among Somali women in the United States (regardless of their FGM/C status), taking psychosocial factors more centrally into account. Clinical Trials.Gov ID no. NCT03249649, Study ID no. 5252. Public website: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03249649 Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-01-04 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10159850/ /pubmed/36599966 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00661-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Johnson-Agbakwu, Crista E. Michlig, Georgia J. Koukoui, Sophia Akinsulure-Smith, Adeyinka M. Jacobson, Danielle S. Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself? |
title | Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself? |
title_full | Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself? |
title_fullStr | Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself? |
title_full_unstemmed | Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself? |
title_short | Health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself? |
title_sort | health outcomes and female genital mutilation/cutting: how much is due to the cutting itself? |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10159850/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36599966 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00661-6 |
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