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Me_irl

When many people think of the signs and symptoms of depression, they think of sadness or withdrawal — but stigma surrounding depression may be preventing us from thinking about it more dynamically. Because everyone is different, the way that depression manifests can vary based on many factors, including race. However, a recent study from the University of Chicago Press found that the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), the test widely used to screen people for depression, is much more effective at determining the mental state of white people than people from other backgrounds — particularly young black people.

Researchers found that black youth, especially those living in poverty, express their depression differently from other groups — and that signs and symptoms experienced by white people may not effectively be used to measure the mental health of other demographic groups.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/test-used-treat-depression-made-for-white-people

daltongraham

That’s just great.

At least they figured it out? Now let’s fix it?

psychokangaroo

This is pretty much par for the course for a lot of medical tests/guidelines developed in the US over the past several decades. Its only relatively recently that the medical profession has started to address these disparities, but here are a few things we do know now!

Guidelines for hypertension control: a huge study recently found that AA patients respond better from a different combination of diuretics than white patients in treatment of advanced hypertension

AA women are more often infected with different strains of HPV than non-AA women, so I think new vaccines are at least being developed (if not on the market already) to improve coverage.

This new depression study!

A lot of POC office workers need greater sun exposure than white office workers to get sufficient Vitamin D. (Last I checked, I don’t think there is currently a guideline, but I’m not super up to date on these studies)

Asian Am women similarly have high breast cancer incidence rates, but we now know that mammograms aren’t always good at ruling out breast cancer in Asian American women compared with women of other races due to the high density of breast tissue, so Asian American women need to be a bit more vigilant.