News

A team of researchers at the Disparities Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) – in collaboration with two teams in Spain and collaborators in the U.S. and Puerto Rico – has tested a novel preventive intervention designed to provide tailored treatment for Latino immigrants with both mental health and substance misuse symptoms. Their report is being published online in JAMA Network Open.

“We know that Latino patients benefit when treatments are culturally tailored, evidence based and accessible,” says Margarita Alegria, PhD, chief of the Disparities Research Unit and a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “We sought to provide a customized treatment to Latino immigrants in different contexts – in the U.S. and Spain – to see how best to serve this growing and important demographic population in our communities.”

The authors note that immigrants face enormous barriers to access appropriate behavioral health treatments. A variety of structural and institutional barriers mean that Latinos who need mental health and substance use services may be less likely to receive evidenced-based care and have worse outcomes than non-immigrant Latino adults. Therefore, the study team conducted outreach to people not seeking care, inviting them to be screened for elevated co-occurring mental health and substance use symptoms. If the screenings revealed mild to severe symptoms, they were invited to participate.

The study team developed the Integrated Intervention for Dual Problems and Early Action (IIDEA) program to provide culturally tailored care that incorporates evidence-based practices – including cognitive restructuring and mindfulness-based therapy along with substance-craving reduction and coping strategies. The intervention was offered in both the Greater Boston area and in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, to Latino adults aged 18 to 70 who screened positive for co-occurring symptoms. IIDEA is an integrated therapy that involves 10 to 12 weekly sessions that include motivational interviewing, cultural formulation, assessment of barriers to care, psychoeducation, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness exercises, communication skills and reduction of risk behaviors.

Read more on News-Medical.net.

In order to highlight pockets of excellence across the country, the NNED selects an organization to highlight once a month. The Yunion has been selected as the Partner of the Month for February in celebration of African American History Month.

The Yunion is a 501c3 non profit organization that serves youth and families in Metro Detroit. Their mission is to counter negative cultural influences that misdirect the lives of youth by raising awareness and strengthening families through innovative prevention programming, education, parental engagement, mentoring, and counseling.

Jason Wilson, founder and CEO of The Yunion, experienced firsthand the negative influence and persuasive power that the hip-hop music culture can have on youth while he was a member of Detroit-based rap group Kaos & Mystro and a music producer for platinum rap artists. His personal experiences led him to first create The Yunion record label in 2002 with the goal of producing music that countered the potentially harmful influences of hip-hop culture. Wilson soon realized, however, that even when the music stopped the negative pressures continued for metro Detroit youth. In order to gain access to funding needed to expand The Yunion’s mentoring services beyond the reach of music, Wilson established The Yunion as a nonprofit in 2005. In 2007 we were awarded our first federal grant for mentoring through the U.S. Department of Education, and today The Yunion has reached over 10,000 Metro Detroit youth via innovative prevention programming, engaging workshops, assemblies, and conferences. The organization has collaborated with over 3-dozen schools, community organizations, and churches in empowering Detroit youth and families.

Their new facilities in Astoria, Queens consists of 30 bed veterans residence and a medically supervised outpatient chemical dependency treatment program for the general population as well as veterans.

Programs offered by The Yunion include:

• Cave of Adullam Transformational Training Academy (CATTA): boys who are emotionally distressed, mentally discontented and spiritually in debt, gather here to be trained and transformed into comprehensive men of the Most High through Emotional Stability Training® (EST)
• Keys 2 Life: an evidence-based life skills and music-mentoring program; designed to encourage, educate and empower youth through key principles in life and in music using relevant principle-driven music lessons, engaging discussions, introspective journaling, and individual monitoring
• Parental Advisory Training: a 90-minute interactive, multi-media session that exposes the negative effect that mass media can have on adolescent risk behaviors such as substance abuse, violence, teen pregnancy, fatherlessness, bullying, and underage drinking
• Standing in the Gap (S.I.G.): a culturally relevant and unique approach to providing African American women and girls programming related to prevention of HIV/AIDS, STDs, and unwanted pregnancy. The intervention also assists women with making knowledgeable decisions and choices about their overall health and well-being, which includes stress-reduction techniques, exercising, and healthy eating
• Students With Awareness and Goals (S.W.A.G.): a holistic prevention program offered to students, with the aim is to equip and empower youth to make healthy life choices that will enable them to confidently navigate through obstacles and challenges. Encompassing abstinence from sex, violence, alcohol and drugs, this prevention program features interactive sessions on topics such as self-esteem, communication skills, decision-making, goal setting, conflict resolution, relationships, and adolescent development among others.

Learn more about how The Yunion and their life-changing support programs that build character and hope for youth.

View a list of previous NNED Partners of the Month here.

The social determinants of health—things like jobs, transportation, neighborhoods, and housing affect our lives and the lives of our families, friends, and communities. Just imagine—if you don’t have a good job, how can you buy healthy food? If you don’t have a way to get to work, how can you get a good job? If your neighborhood doesn’t have a safe place to play, how can you get enough exercise? If you don’t have somewhere safe to live, how can you avoid feeling tired and stressed out? The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), a nonprofit research organization in Washington, DC, wants to prevent factors like these from holding people back. 

How do the social determinants of health shape your life and the lives of your family and community? How would you make sure your friends, family, and community all have the same chance to be healthy, safe, and happy? 

NAM is calling on young leaders, ages 5-26, to use art to explore how the social determinants of health play a role in shaping their lives and their communities, and what it might look and feel like to one day live in a world where everyone has the same chance to be healthy, safe, and happy.

Young Leaders Visualize Health Equity aims to use art as a vehicle for collecting valuable insights from young people around the world about how the social determinants of health shape their lives and the lives of those closest to them. NAM hopes the art, and the process of creating the art, will spark a dialogue about how our lives and our health are shaped by everything around us, and provide insight into how these factors support or hinder everyone’s chance of living the healthiest life possible.

NAM envisions this project as one way for young people to share their own visions of what the world might look like when everyone has the same chance to be healthy, safe, and happy. NAM hopes that the stories they capture through their art will allow viewers to more fully understand how the social determinants of health impact everyone, including young people and their loved ones, and why it is critical to understand and improve these factors so that future generations can thrive.

Learn more and submit your artwork at NAM.edu.

Researchers have documented “large, pervasive and persistent” racial inequalities in the U.S. Inter-group relations are among the factors that contribute to such disparities, many of which manifest themselves in gaps in health care.

Although racism and discrimination affect both genders and all ethnic minority groups, assistant professor of psychiatry at University of Michigan, Shervin Assari’s studies suggest that black males’ health takes the largest hit from racism.

And, Assari’s recent study suggests that white men have more negative attitudes against blacks than do white women. This is very troubling as white men hold the highest level of social power in the U.S. This is also one reason black men experience more discrimination and are more vulnerable to discrimination than black women.

Unfair treatment of black males has been consistently documented by all sources of power, from police, judges, teachers, and employers.

Studies have shown that black men are disproportionately shot and killed by the police, stopped, arrested, incarcerated and jailed. Black men are also over-represented in U.S. prisons. While there are two times more black women than white women in prison, black men are six times more likely than white men to spend some time in prison. Thus, the problem of mass incarceration is not an issue of race but an issue of race and gender.

These encounters marginalize black men in the U.S. society, and harm their health. Only a small proportion of them successfully climb the social ladder. And when they do, society discriminates against them more, which puts them at high risk of depression and depressive symptoms.

While racism and discrimination impact education outcomes of both genders, black boys are more commonly discriminated and more strongly affected by it at schools, than black girls. As a result, black boys are most likely to drop out of school. Given that school drop out reduces future health and well-being of people, black men are at a relative disadvantage compared to other race by gender groups.

Read more on TheConversation.com.

Native American communities experience a much higher rate of mental health issues, such as substance abuse and suicide, than any other racial or ethnic group in the country ― and the media tend to fixate on these grim figures.

Data shows that tribal communities experience psychological distress 1.5 times more often than the general population, and Native Americans use and abuse alcohol and drugs at younger ages and at higher rates than any other ethnic group. Plus, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among 10- to 34-year-olds in tribal communities.

But Doreen Bird, Ph.D., an expert on mental health issues in tribal communities, says numbers like these tell only part of the story.

Bird, who hails from the Kewa Pueblo of New Mexico, has devoted her career to researching mental and behavioral health among Native American communities. She notes that suicide rates can vary widely from tribe to tribe, and cautions against treating all Native peoples as a monolith.

“You can get a very different picture among different tribal nations,” Bird told HuffPost.

Because of the stigma surrounding suicide, the reported numbers can also sometimes be off. In tribal communities, there’s a reluctance to speak about those who have died by suicide, as well as mistrust of outside researchers who examine issues related to suicide but aren’t from within the tribal communities, she added. It can also be taboo to talk about those who have died, Bird explained.

HuffPost spoke with Bird to learn more about her work, and what she wishes others knew about mental health within Native American communities.

HuffPost: What’s the biggest misconception about suicide in tribal communities?

Bird: A lot of times, the media and journal articles highlight high rates of suicide. But even in my own state of New Mexico, there were different varying rates. One study found that the more acculturated tribes had higher suicide rates than the more traditional, less acculturated tribes. But the tribe that I come from [Kewa Pueblo] had zero suicides. Some tribal nations have very low suicides, while others have very high suicide rates. So when you really look into tribal-specific numbers, you can get a very different picture amongst different tribal nations.

HuffPost: What’s important for researchers to keep in mind when it comes to tribal suicide prevention?

Bird: There are many cultural considerations that may be unique to each tribe. Some tribal communities consider it taboo to talk about death while others are OK to talk about death and the deceased. It’s also important to listen to the elders and youth because they have lived experience in their communities. As outsiders trying to make an impact, it behooves us to look at strengths and resilience that lie within each community.

Read more on HuffingtonPost.com.

When she was 14 years old, Diana Chao began having migraines. She often felt dizzy as she walked. Sunlight seemed to pierce her skull.

“It felt like shards digging into my eyes,” said Chao, now 20 and a sophomore at Princeton University.

After a week of constant pain, her parents took her to an optometrist. That’s when they learned she was “swelling from the inside out,” Chao recalled.  She had uveitis, an inflammatory eye disease that can send the pressure inside an eye soaring and render people temporarily blind.

For the next four years, Chao visited ophthalmologists, rheumatologists, and many other specialists in Los Angeles to find a cause. Episodes of temporary blindness resurfaced every few months, as she underwent a battery of tests.

“But every single test came back fine,” Chao said.

Until one ophthalmologist said she’d seen the condition in several patients with mental illness. That’s when it clicked for Chao, who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager. Her body might be reacting to her mind.

It’s not uncommon.

Research shows that mental illness can often manifest as physical symptoms. Depression can show up as headaches, anxiety as gastrointestinal issues, or post traumatic stress disorder as back pain.

The phenomenon is especially common among Asian Americans, multiple studies show. More research is needed to understand why, but psychologists suggest it may relate to the stigma around mental illness in many Asian cultures that prevents people from discussing it openly, as well as traditional Eastern views of an interconnected mind and body.

But many clinicians are unaware of these somatic, or physical, symptoms of mental illness among Asian Americans, leaving a population of more than 21 million underdiagnosed and undertreated.

Chao, a mental-health activist and an avid researcher, looked into the connection between uveitis and psychological distress. While there have been cases linking the two since the 1980s, it isn’t known whether one actually causes the other.

Read more on Philly.com.