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Immigrant students in New Jersey need more support in schools to address their unique mental health needs, a new report from immigrant youth advocates states. A child’s experience migrating to a new country can be traumatic, isolating, and distressing — on top of that, the pandemic has caused significant loss and grief for immigrant and refugee communities.

The New Jersey Consortium for Immigrant Children, a coalition of legal advocates for immigrant youth, released a report last week detailing these and other findings, and focused on highlighting children’s personal experiences during the pandemic that affected their mental health.

Many schools don’t have enough bilingual mental health staff to work with English learners and their families, counselors tend to lack an understanding of an immigrant student’s experiences, and there aren’t enough programs to help immigrant students who recently arrived adjust to their new life, the report outlines.

“The unique and complex experiences of immigrant youth, as well as their limited access to mental health care, mean schools must offer culturally mindful mental health services that are more accessible to students than outside resources,” the report states.

Among the recommendations the report makes are to hire bilingual mental health professionals; create student-led, teacher-facilitated community groups to help new immigrant students adjust; and require training for all staff to learn how to be sensitive to the needs of immigrant students.

Read more at Newark.Chalkbeat.org.

Entering Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, a cutting-edge issue is addressing social determinants of health, which are especially critical among diverse Asian American ethnic groups that vary in education, income, and acculturation. For example, some Southeast Asian immigrants were forced to leave their countries because of the Vietnam War and have suffered piercing intergenerational trauma, socioeconomic deprivation as refugees, and major health disparities. Health care organizations are exploring ways to screen patients for social needs, refer them to community partners in fields such as housing and food security, and integrate their medical and social care.

Federally Qualified Health Centers are pioneers. The Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO), the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), and the Oregon Primary Care Association (OPCA) have created the Protocol for Responding to and Assessing Patient Assets, Risks, and Experiences (PRAPARE) tool to screen for needs such as housing, employment, transportation, safety, and social support. AAPCHO, NACHC, and colleagues at the University of Chicago are currently investigating ways to score this screening instrument to identify high-risk patients for intervention, with support from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases–funded Chicago Center for Diabetes Translation Research. Under global payment mechanisms and alternative payment models such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), health systems have strong incentives to improve care for their most costly resource-intensive patients, who often have significant social needs.

Yet a deeper issue beyond caring for individual patients is inherent within social determinants of health: addressing the underlying structural drivers of inequities that faced my uncles and the many low-income Asian American immigrants I saw at the South Cove Community Health Center. We must have free, frank, and fearless discussions about structural racism and social privilege, the systems that insidiously drive many health disparities.

Read more at NIMHD.Blogs.gov.

Kafi Friday, BA, PharmD candidate 2023; and Prashant Sakharkar, PharmD, MPH, shared their poster “Examining Health Disparities and Level of Depression among Sexual Minorities: A Population-based Cross-sectional Study” at the American Pharmacists Association 2022 Annual Meeting and Exposition.

Friday and Sakharkar argued that sexual minorities, or individuals with nonheterosexual sexual orientation, face increasing challenges in achieving health equity due to stigma and discrimination. In a retrospective cohort study, the investigators sought to examine health disparities and level of depression among sexual minorities; compare the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections, smoking, illicit drug use, and alcohol use in use in sexual minorities; and determine predictors of depression among sexual minorities.

The study’s results painted a grim picture for sexual minorities: sexual minorities were 3 times more likely to have gonorrhea and chlamydia infection, 65% more likely to use illicit drugs, 52% more likely to be a smoker, 3 times more likely to experience severe depression, and 2 times more likely to see a mental health clinician.

These findings suggest that depression can be a consequence of health and behavioral disparities. Screening — particularly in females who identify as a sexual minority, smoke, use illicit drugs, are under the age of 45, and are poor — might help in early intervention. Furthermore, future research should examine the association of depression, gender, and sexual minority status.

Read more at PsychiatricTimes.com.

Raised in a Colombian household, freshman biology major Valeria Velasquez said coming out to her parents as gay was difficult at first.

“Their doubt seeped in through to me because they’ve known me since the second I was born,” Velasquez said. “They’ve raised me. They’ve been by my side for every part of me growing up.

“So if they don’t think I am, then maybe some part of them is right.”

According to the Trevor Project’s 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, 42% of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, and 18% of them identified as Hispanic.

UCF students who are both Hispanic and part of the LGBTQ+ community said they are alarmed by these numbers. Velasquez said it can be a negative experience for children to be rejected by their families.

“If they reject you for being queer, that’s really harmful because you identify as all these things they identify as yet they are shunning you,” Velasquez said.

She said she was hesitant to come out to her parents around the age of 15, and when she did, they didn’t quite believe her at first. Velasquez said she came out a total of three times before her parents accepted her and gave her the reaction she wanted.

She said her relationship with her parents was rocky at first but was strengthened through many conversations after coming out the last time. As someone who had the ability to explore themselves in school, Velasquez said it is important kids continue to get that opportunity.

“Learning about history is really important, and being able to give kids a safe place in school to explore their identities is crucial,” Velasquez said.

Read more at NicholsonStudentMedia.com.

From the 19th century Page Act, which depicted the majority of Chinese women in the US as sex workers, to US military occupations in Asia to pop culture touchstones such as “Full Metal Jacket,” Sung Yeon Choimorrow notes that Asian women in the United States have long been stereotyped as sexual objects or as being submissive — making them especially vulnerable to harassment and violence.

Racism and sexism against Asian American women intensified with the start of the pandemic as the community was scapegoated, said Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. With people referring to Covid-19 as the “China virus” or “kung flu,” it seemed to her that others felt emboldened to act on anti-Asian sentiments.

She recalls how, early on in the pandemic, a man chased her down her neighborhood while she was on a walk with her young daughter. “Go back home with your China virus,” she remembers him yelling. But while the pandemic might have heightened the violence and harassment Asian American women face, the underlying issue has always been there, according to Choimorrow.

“(There are) all sorts of crazy assumptions people make about how Asian women are docile and submissive and don’t stand up for ourselves or think for ourselves,” she said. “I think that makes us very easy targets.”

It’s difficult to disentangle the racialized misogyny that Asian American women in particular face from the racism that has intensified for Asian Americans overall since the pandemic began. But two years later, Asian American women are still reporting incidents of violence and harassment.

Read more at CNN.com.