Star Vega (psychologist)
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Star Vega (1948–2004) was a Mexican American psychologist who specialized in child and multicultural psychology.[1]
Family
Vega was born in Parras Coahu, Mexico on May 30, 1948, and died in La Crescenta, California, on April 24, 2004.
Star Vega had one son, Jeffrey Bryan Wiltse, who was born on February 11, 1968, and died on September 24, 1989, in California.[2] Her mother Blanca Vega Harvey, sister Reyna Vega Nash, brother Al Vega, and grandmother Pilar Vega are all honored in her 1983 dissertation.[3]
Death
Star Vega died on April 24, 2004, in La Crescenta, Los Angeles County, California at the age of 55. Vega battled leukemia for more than three years and underwent a bone marrow transplant that left her autoimmune system weak, she later died in result of it.[4]
Education
Vega attended the University of Southern California where she received her doctorate degree in clinical psychology, making her only the fifth bilingual/multicultural person to receive a doctorate degree in clinical psychology at this institution.[4] During Vega's years as a graduate student, she wrote one of the earliest dissertations regarding the effects of culture on psychological assessment in 1984 titled, The Cultural Effects Upon MMPI Responses of Industrially-Injured Mexican and Anglo-American Males. Vega stated that Mexican-Americans who scored high[clarification needed] on the MMPI were liable for malingering because of cultural differences. These differences were not factored in the MMPI, causing the outcomes of worker's compensation to be faulty.[3] In addition to this dissertation, she also wrote "Translating Research Into Action: Reducing Disparities in Mental Health Care for Mexican Americans" in 2002. This piece led to government allocations of increased mental health care rights in Fresno, California for Mexican Americans.[5]