Latina Self-Reported Mental Health and Delay in Health Care in a New Latino Destination

Abstract

Understanding how depression and/or anxiety affects use of health care among Latinas in rapidly growing new Latino destinations, population where the growth rate of the Latino population exceeds the national average, may enhance community engagement efforts. Using community-based participatory research, a questionnaire assessing health care use was administered to 289 Latinas. Most (70%) reported delaying healthcare, and self-reported depression/anxiety was associated with a 3.1 fold (95% CI: 1.6–5.9) increase in delay, after adjusting for current health status, acculturation, age, education, and place of birth. Mental health disparities exist among Latinas, which are related to delays in use of health care. A gap exists regarding health education interventions for Latinas. More research is needed to identify successful models, especially in new Latino destinations as they may be particularly vulnerable to delay care.

KEYWORDS:

• health disparities
• mental health
• Latino women
• Hispanic Americans
• CBPR
• health care utilization

Notes

The authors would like to thank Ladan Alomar and Ivonne Ramos of Centro Civico of Amsterdam, New York for their active participation and commitment to this research and Blanca Ramos for her help with recruiting Latinas and administering surveys. Support for this work was provided by a grant from NIH (NCMHD) (5RDMD001120), the Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities at the University at Albany and the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis from NICHD (R24HD044943).

Note. *Variable range from 8 to 40.

Note. *p < .05;

**p < .01;

***p < .001.

Note. *p < .05;

**p < .01;

***p < .00;

†Controlling for all other variables in the table.