July marks Minority Mental Health Awareness Month

Ethnic and racial minority groups are less likely to have access to mental health resources and/or use community mental health services, according to the NIMH.

July is Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, which highlights some of the mental health issues that affect minority groups — such as lack of access to care, cultural stigma, discrimination and lower quality of care. To highlight this awareness month, here are five articles from Healio Psychiatry relevant to minority mental health research for clinicians.

APA 2019 opening session promotes diversity, addresses stigma

APA president, Altha J. Stewart, MD, acknowledged the association’s continuous effort to fight stigma and discrimination in mental health in its annual meeting. Read more.

Minority college students may have more undetected psychiatric disorders

College students that belong to ethnic and racial minority groups were found to have more unidentified psychiatric disorders than white peers. Read more.

More evidence-based mental health interventions needed for minority youth

Currently, four mental health interventions are well-established, which mainly focus on cognitive and behavioral change procedures and family systems models. However, more interventions are needed for underserved ethnic minority youth, like Asian Americans and Native Americans, researchers found. Read more.

Buprenorphine treatment varies based on race/ethnicity, income

A research letter published in JAMA Psychiatry suggested that buprenorphine treatment was concentrated among white persons and those with private insurance or who used self-pay. Read more.

Many risk factors contribute to post-injury mental health among black men

In a cohort of urban black men with serious injuries, contributors to post-injury mental health issues were early adverse childhood exposures, preinjury physical and mental health conditions, acute post-injury stress responses and intentional injury, according to study findings. Read more.

References:

NIMH. Minority Mental Health Research Program. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/organization/od/odwd/minority-mental-health-research-program.shtml. Accessed on July 9, 2019.