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Chien-Chi Huang has fought to connect local Asian American communities with mental health resources for years. She has organized mental health forums, held social hours designed to promote self-care, and trained to be a mental health peer advocate.

But Huang found that COVID-19, with its crushing isolation and the wave of anti-Asian violence that followed, has sparked a broader conversation about mental health issues, as has a growing number of high-profile Asian Americans speaking out about their own struggles during the pandemic and beyond.

“When the mental health movement started, it usually wouldn’t get a lot of attention except from white people,” said Huang, founder, and director of the Boston-based nonprofit Asian Women for Health, which will host its annual Asian American Mental Health Forum Saturday. But “when you see celebrities that look like you also have these kinds of problems, it normalizes the actions to seek help.”

Several local organizations said increasing demand for services comes with the need for more resources — something they haven’t had access to. Historically, Asian-focused groups of any type have received a tiny percentage of grant funding.

While the stigma surrounding mental health can keep people from seeking help, community groups say there is also a shortage of bilingual and bicultural mental health professionals who understand the issues that first- and second-generation populations face.

Read more at BostonGlobe.com.

Suicide is a major public health issue for all Americans, but new research suggests it is a particularly pressing problem for Hispanics.

Between 2010 and 2020, the suicide rate among Hispanic adults increased by more than 70%, while the Hispanic population in the United States only grew by about 25%, the researchers reported.

Study author Dr. Jagdish Khubchandani, a professor of public health sciences at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, called that a disproportionate escalation.

“I think that, for me, the biggest surprise is that there have not been a few years where we saw a decline. It has been a constant increase, number one,” Khubchandani said. “Number two, I think this study is showing how prejudice and bias affect people.”

Khubchandani said mental health issues among dominant populations get more notice, as do those among children, teens, and elderly people. The same attention has not been directed to Hispanic adults, he said.

The researchers found that not only did suicide rates outpace population growth among Hispanics but that the southern and western regions of the United States had the highest suicide rates for this demographic in the country.

The total number of suicides among non-elderly Hispanic adults between 2010 and 2020 was nearly 31,200, with more than 25,000 of them men. In those years, the suicide rate among men grew by nearly 36% and in women by about 41%.

Read more at Healthday.com.

With a maternal mortality rate of 55.3 per 100,000, Black women continue to outpace other ethnicities. The rate per 100,000 births for white women stands at 19.1. For Hispanic women, the rate per 100,000 remains at 18.2. And while studies routinely examine the health and well-being of women, some suggest providers often ignore an essential symptom of a mother losing a child at, or before, birth.

“Mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety, are common during pregnancy and after birth. Twice as many pregnant Black women with low incomes experience these conditions as white women,” said Dr. Huynh-Nhu Le, a professor in the Department of Psychological Services and Brain Sciences at George Washington University in D.C.

“Yet, Black women are much less likely than white women to receive mental health screening or treatment during and after pregnancy,” Dr. Le stated. “Therefore, it is critical to address health and mental health concerns for Black women during and after pregnancy to close the gap in providing equitable mental health care.”

“Maternal mental health conditions, such as anxiety, perinatal and postpartum depression are some of the most common complications of pregnancy and childbirth,” stated Leah Sparks, the CEO and founder of Wildflower Health, a maternal health platform for women and their healthcare providers.

Sparks estimated that 1-in-5 women are affected and 75% go untreated.

“This disproportionately impacts BIPOC women who are less likely to seek mental health support due to stigmas around mental health and distrust in the healthcare system,” Sparks noted.

Read more at WashingtonInformer.com.

In May 2020, the United Nations reported that stress and anxiety levels had risen substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, several waves of COVID-19 have left their mark around the globe.

Multiple lockdowns, physical distancing, and fear of infection have increased isolation, loneliness, and anxiety, all factors that, according to Lee Chambers, psychologist and founder of Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing, are “massive catalysts” for mental health issues.

Young people may be less at risk to contract a SARS-CoV-2 infection, but they have not escaped the pandemic’s effects. Disruption to education, work, and social interactions have all taken their toll.

For medical professionals, the pressures have been intense. Not only have they faced continued exposure to SARS-CoV-2, but they have also had to cope with the demands of their changing roles during the pandemic, which has inevitably taken a toll on their mental health.

Read more at MedicalNewsToday.com.

Though they’re famous for aiding individuals with visual impairments and assisting people who struggle with mobility, service dogs provide much more than physical support. They also provide mental support. Now, a new study from PLOS ONE investigates the mechanisms behind these mental benefits, specifically for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study, the authors say, is already improving scientific understandings of the bond between service dogs and veterans and will inspire innovations in the training and placement of service dogs in the future.

The study authors surveyed veterans before pairing them with a service dog and again three months after pairing them. The authors also observed the veterans’ interactions with their dogs, all in an attempt to accurately understand the benefits of the veteran-dog bond.

Analyzing these surveys and observations, the study authors then assessed the connections between the characteristics of the dogs, the closeness of the veteran-dog bond and the severity of the veteran’s PTSD symptoms. They discovered that the characteristics of a dog were not associated with any particular strength of symptoms, save for a dog’s calmness, composure and manageability, which were all associated with a closer bond and a weaker severity of PTSD.

Read more at DiscoverMagazine.com.

The Children’s Hospital Foundation of Manitoba (CHFM) says they are continuing their work to improve mental health care for youth in remote Indigenous communities, and doing it in a way that brings that care right to communities, so those seeking support aren’t always forced to leave home.

“Ongoing isolation and uncertainty fueled demand for child and youth mental health services in Manitoba over the past two years,” CHFM said in their release.

The foundation said it is important to get support to young people who are dealing with mental health issues as quickly as possible, but that isn’t always an option for those who live in remote communities where health care services like mental health services are often much harder to access than they are in large centers like Winnipeg.

Thanks to funding through both private donations and fundraising, CHFM said they implemented an urgent Tele-Mental Health Service in 2020 to allow children and adolescents in rural and Indigenous areas an opportunity to get mental health supports at home.

The program, which now allows youth who need support to connect with health care professionals through telephone or other virtual means, recently released data from 2021, and said that data shows that the program has allowed more youth in need or in crisis to stay closer to home and receive care.

Read more at News.Yahoo.com.