Helping Chinese with depression
A treatment model designed to accommodate the beliefs and concerns of Chinese immigrants appears to significantly improve the recognition and treatment of major depression in this typically underserved group. In a report in the December American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team describes how their model for screening and assessing patients for depression in a primary care setting increased the percentage of depressed patients entering treatment nearly sevenfold. “Ours is the first study to incorporate a culturally sensitive interview into a collaborative care model in order to address disparities in mental illness treatment among ethnic minorities in primary care,” says the report’s lead author Albert Yeung of the MGH Department of Psychiatry and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. ”The model appears to be a promising way to treat this population, which highly underutilizes mental health services.” Yeung and his co-authors note that, while major...