Merely being a minority person of color can be worse for your mental health than low income or experiencing neighborhood violence. Puerto Rican teens and young adults growing up in the South Bronx of New York City are more likely to experience anxiety and depression than their peers growing up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, says a new study in World Psychiatry. Both of these groups live in similar conditions — the big difference is the youth in New York grow up as a minority. “How others interact with you as a minority can affect your mental health and how you see yourself,” said lead author Dr. Margarita Alegria of the Disparities Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. Members of minority groups often experience racism and discrimination. They also hold the idea ...
Bullying is a fact of life for many kids, especially those of color. 24.7% of African-American students and 17.2% of Latino students report being bullied at school. Race-related bullying is significantly associated with negative emotional and physical health effects, according to a Salud America! research review. On the plus side, many resources—including many in Spanish—can help prevent or address bullying.
Website: StopBullying.Gov En Español
StopBullying.gov, an initiative of the US Department of Education's Office of Safe and Healthy Students, has a Spanish-language website. Like the English-language version, the site provides teachers, parents and community leaders with the resources they need to prevent bullying. It also contains research and best practices on ...
Suicide is rising drastically, especially in rural parts of the United States, according to a new study. The rate of suicide rose 41% among those ages 25-64 over the past 17 years of data. In addition, suicide rates among people living in rural counties were 25% higher than those in metro areas, NBC News reports. To reduce these inequities, the Rural Health Information Hub (RHIhub) released a free Rural Suicide Prevention Toolkit. "The modules in the toolkit contain resources and information focused on developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining rural suicide prevention programs," RHIhub states on their website.
The Issue of Rural Health Care and Suicide
People who live in rural areas face unique health challenges: Limited access to primary and mental health ...
Bullying is bad news. Children who are bullied report frequent worries, sadness, and fearfulness. Race-related bullying also has negative emotional and physical health effects. Latino parents even list bullying as a top child health concern, according to a recent national poll. How can we help? Let’s use #SaludTues on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019, to tweet how to stop bullying, create innovative bullying prevention programs in schools and communities, build better minds for Latino kids, and celebrate National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month in October! WHAT: #SaludTues Tweetchat: How to Tackle Bullying among Latino & All Kids
TIME/DATE: 1-2 p.m. ET (Noon-1 p.m. CT), Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019
WHERE: On Twitter with hashtag #SaludTues
HOST: @SaludAmerica
CO-HOSTS: ...
Although violent crimes on the Los Angeles County (48.6% Latino) Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro) are rare, riders complain the high number homeless individuals makes them feel unsafe. In a 2016 survey, 29% of former riders told Metro they stopped taking transit because they felt unsafe, according to the Los Angeles Times. The next year, Metro increased spending on law enforcement and security by 37%. However, police presence alone is not enough to address perceptions of safety. “We cannot and should not arrest our way out of the problem,” said Jennifer Loew, Metro’s director of special projects. That’s why Metro paired law enforcement officers with social workers as part of their homeless outreach program.
Transit Agencies and Homelessness
Transit systems ...
Just two years after launching, the City Health Dashboard is adding new features to dig deeper into neighborhood- and city-specific data to guide local solutions to local health issues. Most data on urban areas focuses on the county, state, or national levels. The City Health Dashboard , however, pulls together local data from multiple sources to provide cities with a one-stop, regularly refreshed data center to help identify local gaps in opportunity and support decision-making to address factors that shape health. Now the Dashboard is adding new features and showcasing them at a webinar on June 5.
What’s New?
In June, the City Health Dashboard is giving cities additional data and new innovative features. The new data allow local leaders to dig deeper into neighborhood- ...
Latino children are far more likely than their peers to suffer depression and many other psychological issues that will go untreated at higher rates than their peers. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it is crucial to not only address this issue at-large but also to consider the inequities that impact underrepresented communities. Latino students in Philadelphia (14.1% Latino) are capturing those disparities and trials that can lead to the development of harmful mental conditions, through an initiative by the Philadelphia Collaborative for Health Equity (P-CHE) and Thomas Jefferson University. This is one of many innovative solutions communities and schools are developing to promote healthy minds. Other programs across the country are also trying to change the status quo, ...
Nearly one-third of children ages 10-12 screened positive for suicide risk during an emergency room visit, some even if they came in for a physical health issue, according to a new study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Typically, suicidal thoughts and behaviors are seen in older teens. "It was troubling to see that so many preteens screened positive for suicide risk, and we were alarmed to find that many of them had acted on their suicidal thoughts in the past,” Dr. Lisa Horowitz, a clinical scientist with NIMH, part of the National Institutes of Health, said in a press release. “This study shows that children as young as 10 who show up in the emergency department may be thinking about suicide."
Study Examined Preteens in ER Visits
Researchers studied 79 ...
Quality housing can make a surprisingly big difference for your physical and mental health. A new study from the United Kingdom links housing tenure, type, cost burden, and desire to stay in current home to C-reactive protein (CRP), a biomarker in the bloodstream associated with infection and stress. Higher levels of CRP—meaning more stress and bad health—were found in people who rented homes. "The poorer health of private renters in our study may reflect the average lower quality of homes in the sector," wrote Drs. Amy Clair and Amanda Hughes, the study authors, in an article in The Conversation. "Private rented homes, for example, are more likely to have damp than social rented or owner occupied homes, and less likely to have central heating."
Housing Cost Burden & ...
