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The trauma of displacement may negatively affect the physical, mental and emotional health of both students and educators, UB research has found.

The study, published in the International Journal of Leadership in Education, examined whether United States educational policies and practices helped or hindered school staff in supporting the needs of students who are refugees or displaced for reasons such as natural disasters.

The researchers recommend that schools implement alternatives to standardized tests for resettled students to graduate, develop new policies to confront gender-based violence and sexual trauma, provide support to school staff to prevent educator burnout, and increase multilingual and mental health support staff.

“Though many staff had deep knowledge about the student populations they worked with and respective academic and health needs, staff also were stymied by hindrances occurring at multiple policy and programmatic levels — which ultimately could contribute to educational inequity and ineffective integration of students beyond first points of contact,” says Melinda Lemke, lead investigator and assistant professor of educational leadership and policy in the Graduate School of Education.

“This educational reality also can be complicated by those educators who fail to understand refugee experiences as more than encompassing histories of violence and trauma,” she says. “Our findings offer a framework for anti-deficit, cultural and linguistically responsive, and trauma-informed practices to help students who, in rebuilding a new home in the U.S., can face new and continued forms of marginalization.”

Read more at Buffalo.edu.

Various health-related disparities such as higher rates of disability, multiple chronic diseases, mental illness, and substance use disorders affect transgender individuals disproportionately, compared to their effects on cisgender individuals. Despite the high prevalence of these issues, significant barriers that block transgender patients’ access to competent, compassionate health care include gender-based stigma and discrimination.

Recent studies have shed light on mental health concerns in transgender youth specifically, with findings indicating a 2- to 3-fold increase in depression and suicidality in this population. Other results demonstrated that more than 75% of transgender and gender nonbinary youth experienced symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder.

Unfortunately, mental illness is more common in transgender youth compared to their cisgender peers. Because of the stress and discrimination that trans youth face, they are at increased risk for depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Studies show that up to 50% of trans youth will contemplate suicide, with risk being higher if youth are rejected by their families.

Read more at PsychiatryAdvisor.com.

During my early years of adolescence, I knew I was depressed. I always felt anxious and worried, and I would express those feelings. But, more often than not, I was criticized and invalidated by those around me. I was told to “stop complaining and toughen up.” This isn’t unusual in the Latinx community. We’re constantly working to maintain a positive work ethic, to provide for our families, to ignore any and all personal issues — because “if you can’t see it,” some like to say, “it isn’t real.”

Many of my mental health symptoms were rooted in trauma I experienced growing up in a low-income community and the effects that come with it: experiencing housing insecurity, confronting scarcity on a daily basis, constantly worrying about money.

For many traditional Latinx folks, mental health issues simply don’t exist. I’ve seen folks around me suppressing their emotions due to traditional beliefs around machismo (a toxic “hustle mentality” around work), emotionally consuming familial practices, and, most significantly, not having the resources to properly address them.

It wasn’t until I recognized how toxic, unstable, and uncertain my lived experience as a Latinx person was when I started to dig into the cause of why I’d always felt so anxious, neglected, and misunderstood.

Read more at Healthline.com.

The exact impact of Covid-19 on Filipino Americans is impossible to know because death data on Asian American subgroups is lumped into a single category. But exclusive data from a recent survey shows that Covid-19 has had a significant impact on Filipino American mental health: More than half of respondents reported anxiety, depression and worrying, among a number of symptoms. Of those respondents, 85 percent attributed them to the pandemic.

The heightened concern many feel about elderly family members with underlying health conditions potentially becoming infected has been a source of worry for Filipino Americans — 34 percent of whom live in multigenerational households, according to Pew Research Center — throughout the pandemic. What made it even more worrying for Filipino Americans is that many live in multigenerational households, said Christine Catipon, a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles.

Those figures are higher than the 46 percent of Asian Americans who reported anxiety during the pandemic, 15 percent of whom had depressive symptoms, according to a report from the coalition Stop AAPI Hate. Researchers also found a stronger link between those symptoms and experiences and anti-Asian racism, compared to the effects of other general Covid-related stressors, Charles Liu, assistant professor of psychology at Wheaton College and researcher for the report, said in an email.

Mental health professionals serving Filipino American clients who spoke with NBC Asian America affirmed survey findings. They said reasons for the reported symptoms ranged from loss of employment to finances. But for a community that places high value on socialization, the loss of social support due to physical distancing guidelines was a significant stressor.

Read more at NBCNews.com

When police took Carlos Yazzie to jail on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico after his arrest on a bench warrant in January 2017, he needed immediate medical attention. His foot was swollen and his blood alcohol content was nearly six times the legal limit. But law enforcement decided that he was fine, jail records show. They put Yazzie in a cramped isolation cell at the Shiprock District Department of Corrections facility instead of taking him to a hospital and then left him unmonitored for six hours without periodic staff checks as required, according to an investigative report. When a guard handing out inmate jumpsuits the next morning stopped at Yazzie’s cell, the 44-year-old day laborer was dead. It would later be determined in an autopsy that he died from acute alcohol poisoning, which is easily treatable by medical professionals, experts said.

Yazzie is one of at least 19 men and women who have died since 2016 in tribal detention centers overseen by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), according to an investigation by NPR and the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration of NPR member stations. Several of them died after correctional officers failed to provide proper and timely medical care, records show.

Federal officials have known about the mistreatment of inmates and other problems at the detention centers for nearly two decades. A 2004 federal investigation found widespread deaths, inmate abuse, attempted suicides, inhumane conditions, and other issues in many of the more than 70 detention centers scattered throughout the U.S., including in Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Wisconsin and Mississippi. The Interior Department’s inspector general told congressional lawmakers during a hearing on the matter then that the facilities were a “national disgrace.”

Read more at NPR.org.

Despite the global conversation surrounding mental health opening up in sports as athletes share their struggles, many athletes of color, particularly Black women, continue to face harsh scrutiny.

Simone Biles’ decision to drop out of gymnastics competitions earlier this week was met with support from her teammates, retired Olympians, and fans. But it was also met with criticism, complaints that she is spoiled and that she let down her team and country.

Seanna C. Leath, assistant professor of Community Psychology at the University of Virginia and contributor for Psychology Today, said that scrutiny is due to a lack of space. Black women are not able to bring their whole selves to professional sports. Leath noted how Black women tend to experience more significant criticism when trying to advocate for themselves, and when they do, there is backlash for it.

“We saw this similarly with Naomi Osaka and Allyson Felix,” Leath said. “This disregard for Black women’s health and their psychological well-being.”

According to data from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, almost 63% of Black people believe that having a mental health condition is a sign of personal weakness. The study says that many members of the Black community feel they will experience shame about having a mental illness and worry about facing possible discrimination due to their condition.

Read more at Cleveland.com.