Assessing Mood Disorders and Suicidality in Hispanics

Abstract

(from the chapter) Early epidemiological research on mood disorders among Hispanics in the USA produced equivocal results. Often, the focus of epidemiological studies was on symptomatology, rather than on clinical diagnoses, and different Hispanic subgroups were infrequently distinguished in analyses. Such strategies led to ambiguity in the interpretation of results. Since mood symptom measures typically detect general psychological distress in addition to diagnosable mood disorders, recent immigrants and members of underprivileged minority groups might be expected to show elevated scores on symptom measures even without any history of psychiatric disorder. In addition, the lack of subgroup analyses obscured potentially important differences between those originating from very different cultural backgrounds and subjected to very different migratory pressures and influences. Even with the advent of more comprehensive epidemiological research using standardized diagnostic interviews, data were not necessarily collected in Spanish. For example, the National Comorbidity Study (NCS) included a sample of 719 US Hispanic participants, surveyed only in English. This led to a restriction of range on important variables linked to language proficiency, such as acculturation and for some Hispanic subgroups, socioeconomic status. Not surprisingly, results of this study were quite different than those of other epidemiological work, indicating that Hispanics were twice as likely as African Americans to report current depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)