Latinos benefit from antidepressants like everybody else — only they do not use them nearly as often. The trick is getting past some cultural barriers.

A study appearing in the March-April issue of General Hospital Psychiatry confirms that the stigma of mental illness, poor communication with physicians and the underuse of antidepressants all play a major part in delaying the recovery of Latinos from depression.

The study authors followed the recovery of 220 Latinos who screened positive for depression at two clinics in Los Angeles County over 30 months. Overall, they found that nearly 70 percent of participants improved, albeit slowly, following a course of antidepressants and with the benefit of good physician-patient communication, but stigma remained an important barrier. Most of the participants were underemployed, Spanish-speaking Latinas with limited education, who had access to health care insurance.

“Doctor-patient communication is often the primary tool for bridging the gap between patients’ perspectives and the biomedical model that underlies medication-based treatments for depression,” said lead author Alejandro Interian, Ph.D., of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. READ MORE

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