News

The number of hate crimes with Asian-American victims reported to the New York Police Department jumped to 28 in 2020, from just three the previous year, though activists and police officials say many additional incidents were not classified as hate crimes or went unreported.

Asian-Americans are grappling with the anxiety, fear and anger brought on by the attacks, which activists and elected officials say were fueled early in the pandemic.

These attacks have lasting effects, said Kellina Craig-Henderson, who works for the National Science Foundation and has studied the psychological impact of hate crimes. She said that people targeted because of their race and ethnicity can suffer ailments like post-traumatic stress disorder, often more acutely than victims of other crimes.

She added that hate crimes reverberate through communities and can further marginalize them.

Yen Yen Pong, 37, bought pepper spray after a maskless stranger accosted her last April in Queens, yelling racist remarks about the virus. After Ms. Pong tried to take a photograph of him, he snatched her cellphone and shattered it on the pavement. Ms. Pong, who works at an asset management company, said she thought Asian-American women were particularly at risk, an observation supported by Stop AAPI Hate data showing that Asian-American women in New York were accosted three times as often as men.

Several Asian-Americans who were victims of attacks in New York last year and reported them to the police said the scars were lasting.

Read more at NYTimes.com.

Angela Matijczak, a first-year doctoral student at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work, led a study exploring how social support from humans and comfort from companion animals can help LGBTQ+ young adults deal with micro-aggressions. The study, “The Moderating Effect of Comfort from Companion Animals and Social Support on the Relationship between Micro-aggressions and Mental Health in LGBTQ+ Emerging Adults,” is featured on the cover of the January issue of the journal Behavioral Sciences.

LGBTQ+ people often experience micro-aggressions, which are typically unconscious behaviors or statements aimed at members of a marginalized group that reflect a hostile or discriminatory message. Micro-aggressions have been linked to detrimental mental health outcomes, such as higher rates of depressive, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress symptoms; lower self-esteem; and negative perceptions of one’s own LGBTQ+ identity.

Previous studies have found that social support from humans can serve as an important protective factor against these negative mental health outcomes for LGBTQ+ emerging adults. An unexplored area of research, however, is whether pets might also serve a protective role.

The study, which involved a sample of 134 LGBTQ+ emerging adults, found that social support from humans moderated the relationship between micro-aggressions and depressive symptoms. Comfort from pets, meanwhile, also moderated the relationship between interpersonal micro-aggressions and depressive symptoms. But for participants who had high or medium levels of emotional comfort from pets, micro-aggressions were positively associated with depressive symptoms.

Read more at MedicalPress.com.

Despite making up about one-fifth of the overall Black population in the United States, Black immigrants and their children are often neglected when it comes to the research and discourse around mental health or wellness. A new report from the Black Alliance for Just Immigration explores the disproportionate burdens facing Black immigrants, particularly women and femmes, and reveals the numerous overlapping factors that often contribute to poor mental health in these communities.

“Research is important when it’s heavily statistical,” said report author and BAJI Gender Justice coordinator Catherine Labiran. “But it’s the stories that really make things more personal and beautiful, and allow us to connect with the significance of people’s experiences.”

An overwhelming number of participants simply sought intergenerational discourse on mental health within their own families and communities—conversations devoid of shame or stigma. They especially yearned for the cis-heterosexual Black men in their lives to be held accountable for gender-based violence and misogynoir. Beyond self-care and culturally-competent therapy, researchers urged community care that works to challenge the superhuman stereotype common to Black women and femmes.

As immigrants, this is compounded by the issue of non-belonging. “We know,” she wrote, “that our liberation cannot be fully actualized while our loved ones are incarcerated. We know that our liberation cannot be fully actualized when our families are separated at borders. We know that our liberation cannot be fully actualized while we are unable to fully explore our genders and sexualities. We know that our liberation cannot fully be actualized while we are unable to freely discuss our mental health and receive holistic, quality, affordable care.”

To close out the report, Labiran and other BAJI researchers offer a straightforward list of policy-related and community-based recommendations to actualize such liberation based on their research.

Read more at ColorLines.com.

A program out of Meals on Wheels Central Texas has successfully moved the needle on social isolation and the mental and behavioral health consequences that particular social determinants of health can have, data reported in JAMA Psychiatry showed. The study, conducted by researchers from the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas Austin, showed that laypeople can address loneliness as a social determinant of health through targeted, empathetic phone calls to high-risk individuals.

Social isolation has long been a pressing social determinant of health, naturally impacting mental and behavioral health and also showing signs of affecting physical health, too, the researchers said.

“Loneliness has been indicated as a risk factor for overall mortality and conditions from stroke to heart disease,” the team wrote. “It is associated with depression and anxiety, even if the direction and degree of causality is unclear.” And at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that connection became clearer. The virus outbreak pushed Americans across the country, but especially those with chronic illness or other risk factors, to shelter in place and avoid social gatherings. This likely stressed social isolation, the team said.

The 16-person call team ranged in age from 17 to 23 and were trained specifically in empathetic calling/conversation techniques. The researchers defined empathy as “prioritizing listening and eliciting conversation from the participant on the topics of their choice.”

Overall, the intervention proved successful, the team said.

Read more at PatientEngagementHIT.com.

A recent state report about mental health in the Latinx community showed that while Latinx youth are seeking mental healthcare at high rates, there is still a lack of services in rural areas like Malheur County, where 33% of the population is Latinx.

Malheur County has the second-highest ratio of Latinx to other residents by county in Oregon. Of counties with a high population of Latinxs, it has the third-highest ratio of residents to mental healthcare providers – 1,223 to 1. Experts say that this isn’t enough.

“Access to any mental health providers, especially culturally specific mental health providers, is particularly scarce” in rural counties, the report said.

“Access in and of itself is a challenge,” said Gustavo Morales, the executive director of EUVALCREE, a nonprofit based in Ontario that works with the Latinx community. “We have limited behavioral and mental health providers, and even with those providers, waitlists go between three to six months. Those disparities are even more exacerbated with communities that have challenges with linguistic and cultural access.”

Local educators say that they are working to intervene with youth through school-based mental health resources.

Factors such as language contribute to what Malheur County Health Department Director Sarah Poe identified as “social determinants of health.” The term refers to social factors, like English proficiency, income level, and access to prevention education, that can affect health from mental health to teen pregnancy.

Read more at MalheurEnterprise.com.

Low-income middle-aged African-American women with high blood pressure very commonly suffer from depression and should be better screened for this serious mental health condition, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The researchers found that in a sample of over 300 low-income, African-American women, aged 40-75, with uncontrolled hypertension, nearly 60% screened positively for a diagnosis of depression based on a standard clinical questionnaire about depressive symptoms.

Recent research suggests that hypertension and depression often occur concurrently. Darrell Gaskin and colleagues note that the connection has not been well studied in African Americans, but should be, given they have relatively high rates of hypertension. Moreover, women in general have much higher rates of depression compared to men and depression is often underdiagnosed and untreated.

The nearly 60% prevalence of apparent depression among these hypertensive, low-income middle-aged African American women suggests that these women should be routinely screened for, and, if need be, treated for depression, Gaskin and colleagues emphasize.

They note, however, that 85% of the women with depression-level CES-D-10 scores reported receiving some treatment for depression within the prior six months—implying that much of the depression among these low-income middle-aged, hypertensive African-American women is already treated, albeit inadequately.

Read more at HUB.JHU.edu.