Latino mental health service needs: Implications for training psychologists.

Abstract

Latinos are the second largest minority group in the United States.' As a group, they are young, with a median age of 24 (compared with 32 for the majority population), and their numbers are rapidly growing. It is projected that by the turn of the century, they will surpass African Americans and become the largest minority group in the country. According to 1985 statistics (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1988) there are approximately 1 7 million Latinos in the United States excluding Puerto Rico, which means that Latinos make up over 7% of the population of the continental United States. In 30 years, this will double from 17 million to 34 million.Of the Latino groups, Mexican Americans number over 10 million, and most live in the southwestern part of the country. Next come Puerto Ricans, who in the northeast section of the country number about 2.5 million, and in Puerto Rico have a population of 3.5 million. Cubans are the third 'As de la Vega (1990, has indicated,Latino is currently viewed as the "politically appropriate" term to refer to people of Central and South America a s well as to those from the Caribbean regions or to their descendents in the United States. It is used in preference to the term Hispanic, meaning Spanish-speaking, which does not connote the ethniciracial origin of these populations L.4TINO MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS 59

Illness Conceptualizations Among Older Rural Mexican-Americans with Anxiety and Depression

“…This finding is inconsistent with previous work that has established that the term “ataque de nervios”/ “nervios” is indeed a common idiom because it was recognized by the majority of a Spanish sample as well as a comparison Hispanic American migrant sample of participants ages 18 – 65 (Dura-Vila & Hodes, 2012). However, our findings are consistent with other research showing that age may play a role in idioms of distress and that older minority adults do not tend to use the same terms as do mental health professionals to describe their emotional experiences (De La Cancela & Guzman 1991). In our sample, the individuals who did not report common idioms still described their distress using other words, suggesting that common idioms of distress might not be applicable to a significant portion of this population and that relying solely on these words in interviews and questionnaires may cause the assessor to miss valuable diagnostic data.…”

“…Despite the common notion that Latino individuals report more somatic symptoms than Anglos, endorsement of physical symptoms of psychological distress was surprisingly low in this sample in both quantitative (e.g., BSI-18) and qualitative assessment. These findings are inconsistent with a large body of research linking Latino ethnic groups to increased endorsement of somatic symptoms of distress (Diefenbach et al 2004; Escobar et al 1989; De La Cancela & Guzman 1991; Zinbarg et al 1994). Although it is unclear why this occurred, one possible explanation is that the recruitment method (by soliciting individuals who felt “tense or down”) included mostly individuals who experience their distress psychologically, rather than somatically.…”

Providers’ perspectives regarding the development of a web-based depression intervention for Latina/o youth.

“…They also can be accessed from the convenience and privacy of one's home, which can further serve to address cultural stigma issues related to treatment seeking. For example, Latino males who adhere to machismo values may not be willing to seek formal mental health treatment as they may feel the need to project an image of strength and self-reliance (De La Cancela & Guzman, 1991; Torres, Solberg, & Carlstrom, 2002). …”

Building Interdisciplinary/Intersectoral Research Partnerships for Community-Based Mental Health Research with Older Minority Adults

“…Research conducted by anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists shows that older adults, especially those of Latino, Caribbean/Puerto Rican and African-American backgrounds, tend to define emotional problems somatically and do not have the expected emotional vocabularies that signal mental health literacy and mental health problems to mainstream professionally trained clinicians (Bok & Candales, 1985;Borowsky, 2000;Comas-Diaz, 1989;Cuellar & Stanford, 1984;De La Cancela & Guzman, 1991). For many of these elders, having a mental health problem is associated with "being crazy (loco)," or out of control (Schensul, 1992).…”