227 Psychological Distress Among Latinos During COVID-19
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2021
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
COVID-19 is having dangerous impacts on mental health in the US with more than 14% of all adults meeting the criteria for serious psychological distress. These numbers are even higher among Latinos with more than 19% of adults experiencing distress. Dr. Margarita Alegria, chief of the Disparities Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Hopkins mental health and policy researcher Dr. Beth McGinty talk with guest host Dr. Colleen Barry about mental health and wellbeing nine months into the pandemic, the factors behind high rates of distress among Latinos, and policies that could make a difference in the months ahead.
KEYWORDS: community mental health; health equity; racial disparity
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.3 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:38.7 | at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:46.8 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of the Public Health On Call podcast. |
| 0:51.8 | Today, guest host Colleen Berry, chair of the Department of Health Policy and |
| 0:56.3 | Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, talks with Margarita Allegria, |
| 1:02.4 | chief of the disparities research unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital and professor |
| 1:07.5 | in the departments of medicine and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, |
| 1:11.8 | and Beth McGinty, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins and lead author of a series of studies in JAMA |
| 1:18.2 | on COVID-19 and psychological distress. They discuss mental health and well-being nearly a year |
| 1:25.6 | into the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on high rates of |
| 1:29.6 | psychological distress among Latinx communities and policies that can make a difference in the |
| 1:34.9 | months ahead. Let's listen. Maggie Allegria and Beth McGinty, thank you both so much for joining |
| 1:42.3 | me today. Beth, let's start with you. You are the lead author of a series of research studies in JAMA on psychological distress and the COVID pandemic. Can you give a snapshot on what we know about how COVID-19 has affected mental health and well-being in the U.S. from the studies you've led in other |
| 2:02.2 | research? Absolutely. The COVID-19 pandemic has had pretty seriously detrimental effects on |
| 2:11.0 | mental health in the U.S. Our studies show that the prevalence of serious psychological distress has more than tripled |
| 2:20.1 | during the COVID pandemic relative to pre-COVID. So pre-COVID, typically about three to four |
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