An Audiotaped Mental Health Evaluation Tool for Hispanic Immigrants With a Range of Literacy Levels

Abstract

Debilitating mental illness is treatable if found. There is no validated self-administered mental illness evaluation tool for immigrant Hispanic farm workers with variable literacy levels. This study tested sensitivity and specificity of an audiotaped survey developed for low literacy levels compared with standard interview instruments. Subjects from 11 migrant camps completed a self-administered audiotaped survey in Spanish to diagnose major depression, substance abuse, panic and generalized anxiety, and domestic violence. Primary care clinics assisted in finding camps and provided follow-up treatment. For 154 men and 156 women, the audio tool was most sensitive for major depression and specific for anxiety disorder, alcohol abuse, and domestic violence. Seventy percent of those diagnosed with major depression received appropriate treatment. This study validated an inexpensive, self-administered audio tool to evaluate the mental health of immigrant Hispanic farm workers with a wide range of literacy levels.

Building informed consent for cholinesterase monitoring among pesticide handlers in Washington State

“…This result was not found in those with more than 7 years of schooling. These results confirm previous findings in the migrant Hispanic community that audiotapes are an effective way to bridge low literacy levels [Boiko et al, 2005].…”

“…This result was not found in those with more than 7 years of schooling. These results confirm previous findings in the migrant Hispanic community that audiotapes are an effective way to bridge low literacy levels [Boiko et al, 2005].A larger issue raised by this work is whether public health screening programs, such as this one for cholinesterase monitoring, represent a health intervention or research. This project is an example of how the intent and context of data collection, the kind of data collected, and the use to which the data is put will determine whether a particular project represents research, health intervention, quality assessment, or something else.…”

Additional psychometric data for the Spanish Modified Dental Anxiety Scale, and psychometric data for a Spanish version of the Revised Dental Beliefs Survey

“…Similar to what we described in our previous paper [14], we encountered a few interested adults who could not participate in our study due to low literacy. More inclusive estimates of dental fear in Hispanics might require alternative (non-written) methods appropriate for this population [45]. Furthermore, our cross-sectional design limits us to reporting the associations between variables, and does not provide evidence for causal relationships between them.…”

Evaluation of a Radionovela to Promote HPV Vaccine Awareness and Knowledge Among Hispanic Parents

“…The posttest also included a short series of questions related to demographic characteristics and level of acculturation that occurred at the end of the posttest. The pretest and posttest surveys were designed for participants with low levels of literacy [22]. All questions and response options were read aloud and each response option was color coded so that the participant could select the response based on the color of the answer.…”