Minorities less likely to receive care for depression - Better Life - USATODAY.com: Whites in the USA are much more likely than racial or ethnic minorities to receive needed care for depression, and, for some, the lack of care can be life-threatening, two new studies suggest.
About 60% of whites with symptoms of depression had received treatment in the past year, compared to only 41% of blacks and about a third of Asians and Latinos, in one new study, published in the November issue of Psychiatric Services. The results were pooled from three national surveys of 9,000 adults by researchers at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School.
Care is one thing -- good care something else. Using widely-accepted criteria, minorities also came up short on access to good-quality care even if they were treated, researchers say.
Depression isn't just about the mind or emotions, it's a mental disorder that can endanger physical health. There's strong evidence that patients with heart disease who are depressed have a 2-to-4-fold higher risk for complications and death from their cardiac problems.
Depression is common in heart patients, but blacks are only half as likely as whites to receive treatment for their mental disorder, suggests new research from Duke University Medical Center. The Duke researchers studied 827 patients who received cardiac care over three years at their center.
