Older Vietnamese Americans suffer high level of depression
September 5th, 2008, 3:00 am · Post a Comment · posted by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
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Older Vietnamese Americans are twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to need mental health care and their situation is often missed by doctors and nurses, UC Irvine says in a new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Lead researcher Quyen Ngo-Metzger says the problem is especially prevalent among political refugees who moved to the United States following the end of the Vietnam War, and that some people are so depressed they have trouble working.
The findings are based on comments people age 55 and older made during the California Health Interview Survey. Telephone interviewers spoke with 25,177 whites and 359 Vietnamese Americans earlier this decade. The numbers, at the time, were proportional to each group’s presence in California’s population. (Click to read study: ucistudy.pdf)
Ngo-Metzger (shown in image) says that 10 percent of whites respondents said they experienced emotional or mental health problems, such as feeling sad, blue, anxious or nervous. About 21 percent of the Vietnamese American respondents reported the same problems. But many of them did not discuss the situation with doctors.
“There is a stigma attached to mental health problems, even in the white community,” says Ngo-Metzger. “But I think there’s more isolation among Vietnamese Americans. They don’t even have a word for depression. It’s not seen as something that they’d necessarily seek help for.
“A lot of these people are veterans of the Vietnam war. Some were POWs for 10-20 years before they were released and allowed to immigrate to the United States. Many of them still have post-traumatic stress syndrome, and now they have to adapt to a new language and new culture.
“It’s really important for physician and nurses to see this group of people as having a high risk for mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.”
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