News

Women Veterans: The Journey to Mental Wellness is a comprehensive assessment of the unique factors contributing to the staggering rates of suicide among women veterans. According to data released by the VA in November 2023, the suicide rate among women veterans jumped 24.1% between 2020 and 2021—nearly four times higher than the 6.3% increase among male veterans and vastly higher than the 2.6% increase among nonveteran women.

Women Veterans: The Journey to Mental Wellness shows that key factors, including high rates of military sexual trauma and intimate partner violence, substance use disorders and reproductive health challenges, put women veterans at higher risk for suicide.

An even more vulnerable time for women veterans is during menopause. According to the report, this period corresponds to the highest rates of suicide in U.S. women.

Usually beginning between ages 45 and 55, menopause comes with fluctuations in hormone production and is often accompanied by a variety of symptoms, including hot flashes, sleep disruption, body aches, weight gain, incontinence and memory problems. Menopause has also been shown to raise the risk for depression in U.S. women twofold, the report notes.

Read more at DAV.org.

Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions about funding streams for community-based organizations (CBOs). These questions should take no more than 10 minutes of your time. The intent of this project is to improve the flow of federal and state funds to CBOs serving underserved populations. Since some of the questions focus on funding, it may be necessary for someone with knowledge regarding the operations of your organization (e.g., executive director, corporate financial officer, or someone on the leadership team) to answer the questions.

This survey is being administered by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors Research Institute (NRI). Your responses will contribute to a federal Substance Use and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report which will be publicly available on the SAMHSA Center for Financing Reform and Innovation website.

Please answer every question. In some cases, you may give your BEST estimate or choose an answer that closely fits your organization. Once you have submitted your responses, a confirmation email will be sent to you. This email will contain a link for you to return to your responses to review and make edits, as necessary. You may also enter your email address at the top of the survey page by clicking on the toolbar that says, “Save and continue later” to save your progress and receive an email to return at a later time. Your responses are confidential. Results will be reported in aggregate, without identifying individuals or organizations.

If you have any questions about this initiative, please contact Kristin Neylon (kneylon@nri-inc.org).

Take the survey here.

A three-year partnership between UC Santa Cruz and United Way to empower young change-makers is wrapping up this spring, with youth leaders from across Santa Cruz County preparing to distribute resource kits for local immigrants. It’s the final step in a long journey of organizing, research, and action intended to bring about positive social change.

The project is an example of youth participatory action research (YPAR), a model where professional researchers and local youth co-develop efforts to answer questions that matter to the community. In the process, youth participants learn new research and leadership skills and apply the findings of their research to address local needs.

The team decided on their research topic and methods and collected data over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year. The students chose to focus on mental health, in connection with United Way’s Jóvenes Sanos initiative, and they named their project Alzamoz la Voz, or “raising our voices”. Psychology Professor Regina Langhout, who advised students through the research development stage, said the youth had an expansive understanding of mental health.

Read more at News.UCSC.edu.

Growing up in southern Texas as a third-generation Mexican American, Gilberto Perez Jr. was familiar with some of the challenges immigrants face.

That fueled his efforts as a social worker in Indiana, where he’s worked with community mental health centers to fill the gap in services for people who need mental health help. In the early 2000s, through a community health assessment, he found that many people (86% of the respondents) felt lethargic and depressed several times a week. It also became clear that people didn’t know where to find help.

In 2007, he created the “Bienvenido” curriculum and program, initially designed around that original health assessment. Perez Jr. said the state recognized that the program – Bienvendio means “welcome” in Spanish — encouraged people to seek help at health centers.

His program first received a contract to train others across Indiana. Then in 2008, the National Network to Eliminate Behavioral Health Disparities (NNED) and the National Latino Behavioral Health Association nominated the program as one of 16 “community defined evidence projects” — efforts that use cultural and or community guides to improve the availability, quality and outcomes of behavioral health care.

Read more at MinnPost.com.

Despite facing frequent experiences with discrimination and rising fears of hate crimes and gun violence, only 24% of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults and 16% of Asian American adults in California say they need mental health support.

Among adults who sought mental health care, 42% of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders and 31% of Asian Americans had difficulties accessing services, citing cost, lack of insurance and not knowing their options.

To help increase the use of mental health care services among Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and Asian American adults, a new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and AAPI Data, based at UC Riverside, recommends using more culturally relevant outreach specified for nationalities and languages.

In their report, the researchers used a novel approach. They began with data about Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and Asian American, mental health from the CHPR’s California Health Interview Survey, or CHIS, from 2020 through 2022. In addition, AAPI Data and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research initiated the California AANHPI Community Needs Survey — a 15-minute follow-on survey for Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans, who responded to the 2021 and 2022 CHIS.

This rigorous survey data was combined with historical community experiences as influenced by cultural factors, U.S. foreign policy and intergenerational trauma, and feedback from an intentional sample of leaders in various NHPI and Asian American communities.

The report also provides a more granular examination of mental health experiences for eight subgroups within the Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and Asian category. Those groups were: Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, Vietnamese, other Southeast Asian (excluding Vietnamese), Filipino, South Asian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

Read more at NewsRoom.UCLA.edu.

The phrase “model minority” was first used in reference to Asian Americans during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Some pointed to Asian Americans as being successful and well-adjusted — despite their own recent history of racial oppression which included the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The phrase was meant to pose a challenge to African American activists: “Why can’t you be more like them?” And from its earliest usage, the myth of the model minority has driven a wedge among racially marginalized groups and has put undue pressure on Asian Americans, said Dr. Jaki Yi, assistant professor in the University of Washington Bothell’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences.

“Asian Americans are lauded for being academically oriented, hardworking, high achievers because of the values supposedly inherent in their culture,” she said. “These are all things that are positive on the surface but have really harmful mental health implications for Asian Americans who are faced with it.”

Read more at UWB.edu.