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In November, the Citizens’ Committee for Children released data showing what many clinicians and experts on mental health in the Latino community already knew: Latina mothers in New York City are suffering, and the support provided by the city isn’t cutting it.

Roughly 42% of Latina women with children at home in New York City report symptoms of anxiety or depression, according to the CCC’s analysis of the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

“Latina women have always had a higher prevalence of depression in comparison to other women,” said Dr. Rosa Gil, director of Comunilife, a nonprofit focused on mental health and housing services for the Latino community. “I think that challenge has gotten much more critical for Latina women due to the pandemic.”

During the height of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, Latinxs in New York City were dying at twice the rate of white and Asian New Yorkers, according to data from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. National data from the UCLA Policy & Politics Initiative found that Latina women suffered the largest drop in employment of any group in the U.S. during the pandemic.

It’s a “perfect storm,” said Mary Adams, director of mental health and wellness at University Settlement, which provides family medical services to those living on the Lower East Side. “So many of these women were holding their families together. They were losing jobs and not replacing their income and, in some cases, may not have been eligible for benefits.”

Read more at TheCity.NYC.

The shocking Atlanta mass shooting in March 2021 that resulted in the deaths of six Asian American women brought the nation’s attention to the rise in anti-Asian violence since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase in hate speech, property damage, and brutal attacks, coupled with the negative mental health impact of quarantine isolation, has led to an increase in feelings of anxiety and distress among Asian Americans. With this confluence of stressors, we anticipate more Asian Americans will present for psychiatric care. Given the shortage of psychiatrists with expertise in working with Asian American patients, it seems timely for us to share some insights on both acute and longer-term issues facing Asian Americans.

Asian Americans are an incredibly diverse group, representing more than 20 countries of origin and hundreds of languages and cultures. The needs of immigrants differ from those of American-born Asians. There are wide differences in socioeconomic status, insurance status, educational background, age, and degree of acculturation.

When it comes to treating symptoms that are produced by systemic forces like racism and alienation from mainstream American culture, bearing witness to a patient’s experience of racism is like treating the symptoms without addressing the underlying cause. A truly comprehensive treatment plan for Asian American patients ultimately requires us to address the root cause by participating in advocacy for systemic change outside the consultation room.

Read more at PsychiatricTimes.com.

Addressing the Intersectional Behavioral Health Needs of Racially/Ethnically Diverse LGBTQ+ Communities

Across the country, both racially/ethnically diverse and LGTBQ+ communities are at higher risks for adverse behavioral health conditions due to factors such as discrimination, systemic barriers, and lack of access to care. For those who live at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, these layers of marginalization create nuanced behavioral health needs. With the added impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and recent anti-transgender legislation, diverse LGBTQ+ populations are experiencing an increase in depression, anxiety, substance use, and suicide ideation. Understanding intersectionality — the combined and overlapping aspects of a person’s identity — is key to providing culturally responsive and trauma-informed care.

In recognition of National Minority Health Month (April), join this NNED Virtual Roundtable to learn how organizations are responding to the complex behavioral health needs of racially/ethnically diverse LGBTQ+ communities. Panelists will discuss the impacts of trauma and adverse mental health conditions associated with intersectional identities, and how to build affirming practices and environments.

During this NNED Virtual Roundtable, participants will learn:

• The socioeconomic and cultural ramifications on behavioral health for racially/ethnically diverse LGBTQ+ populations
• How to provide safe spaces for youth and adults experiencing trauma
• Training and learning opportunities for providers to build capacity for behavioral health care and substance use treatments
• How communities can build culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and affirming systems and programs that allow racially/ethnically diverse LGBTQ+ populations to thrive

The event was also shared on Facebook Live at fb.com/nned.net and closed captioning was available through Zoom.

This NNED Virtual Roundtable was hosted by the NNED National Facilitation Center and SAMHSA’s Office of Behavioral Health Equity in partnership with the Center of Excellence for LGBTQ+ Behavioral Health Equity.

Opening Remarks

Panelists

Facilitator

As the pandemic ravaged the country, deaths from drug overdoses surged by nearly 30%, climbing to a record high. The drug crisis has also diversified from an overwhelmingly white affliction to killing people of color with staggering speed. The death rate last year was highest among Native Americans, for whom COVID-19 piled yet more despair on communities already confronting generations of trauma, poverty, unemployment, and underfunded health systems.

It is no longer an opioid epidemic, but one in which people are dying from deadly cocktails of many drugs. Deaths involving methamphetamine have nearly tripled in recent years, with Native Americans 12 times more likely to die from it.

These deaths were a culmination of far more than that: Despite their resilience, Native Americans carry in their blood 500 years worth of pain from being robbed of their land, their language, their culture, their children. In living people’s memory, children were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools with the motto, “Kill the Indian, save the man.”

Amid all this death and dying, one of the most urgent questions Native American communities are facing is how to spare the next generations from starting the cycle anew.

Read more at CBSMinnesota.com.

Opioid overdose deaths among older adults in the U.S. have grown fastest among Black men, a new study shows, offering more evidence that a deadly drug crisis once seen as mostly affecting whites has been disproportionately harming people of color.

The research, published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, found the annual rate of opioid overdose deaths increased approximately tenfold among adults 55 years of age and older, from 0.9 deaths per 100,000 population in 1999 to 10.7 per 100,000 in 2019. Over those two decades, nearly 80,000 U.S. residents 55 or older died due to an opioid overdose, with nearly 80% of those deaths occurring among those between the ages of 55 and 64 and more than 58% occurring among men, the study found.

Driving the overall increase has been a spike in overdose deaths among Black men, who since 2013 have had substantially higher death rates than the overall rate for people at least 55 years old. By 2019, the opioid overdose fatality rate among older Black men was approximately four times higher than the overall rate among older adults, at more than 40 deaths per 100,000 population.

The increase in opioid overdose deaths among older Black men is the latest evidence of the U.S. drug epidemic’s changing demographics. Notably, the early years of the opioid epidemic were fueled heavily by prescription pain medications, which white patients at least initially were more likely to receive than Black patients. Yet the racial divide has narrowed in recent years, with the opioid overdose death rate among Black individuals reaching 17.1 per 100,000 in 2019 compared with 19 per 100,000 among whites, the KFF figures show.

While Mason says the prevalence of fentanyl might be a factor in the increase in overdose deaths among older Black adults, she notes that Black patients are less likely to have health insurance, and her study cites separate research showing higher receipt of buprenorphine – a key medication used to treat opioid use disorder – among white patients than others.

“All of these things sort of coalesce to put Black people at a continued disadvantage,” Mason says.

Read more at USNews.com.

Switching between in-person and online learning, social distancing guidelines, and other unexpected changes from the COVID-19 pandemic have led to more pressure on students and an increase in demand for mental health services.

To meet the rising demand, schools across the state are in the process of hiring over 500 additional psychologists, social workers, counselors, and school nurses with the help of funds from the $17.1 billion state K-12 budget signed by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer last year. It included $240 million for school districts to hire staff to support students dealing with mental and physical health issues driven by the coronavirus.

“The pandemic reminded us that school-based mental and physical health professionals are not luxuries. Healthy students — physically, mentally, and social-emotionally — are better learners,” Whitmer said in a statement. “Having skilled professionals in school buildings helps our kids get the supports they need so they can thrive in the classroom and beyond.”

“I think people are more stressed than ever before and I guess that does carry over to our population of students that are definitely not immune to the stressors around them,” said Michael Behrmann, superintendent of the Harbor Springs schools. “(We) have two full-time mental health therapists and one part-time therapist. We also have 2.5 school counselors that work in our schools as well and a facilitator supporting Native American students.”

Read more at PetoskeyNews.com.