Mental Health: Deficiencies in Treatment of Depression
Depression is defined as a feeling of sadness, feeling blue, unhappy, and miserable or down in the dumps. True clinical depression is defined as a mood in which feelings of sadness and anger interfere with your everyday life for an extended period of time. The news article dated January 12, 2010 in the New York Times, Titled; Mental Health: Deficiencies in Treatment of Depression reports that antidepressant drugs used for the treatment of depression seems to work more effectively on the severally depressed patients, more so then the patients that has a more milder form of depression. Researchers have found that most Americans that suffer some type of depression will never seek treatment and only half will receive treatment of any kind. Study show that only 1-5 Americans receive care that could be a talk therapy, medication or a combination of both. The study found that African-American and Mexican-American individuals were less likely than any other ethnic group to receive treatment of any kind. The study was conducted by Hector M. Gonzalez who is the assistant professor at Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan along with staff members.
In my opinion as an African-American, we are taught that it is a sign of weakness to show that you are not mentally strong. We teach our son, that big boys don’t cry and to brush it off if you fall down. We teach our daughters to masks their feelings and never let anyone see you sweat and that you have to be strong ones in the family because you have no one but yourself to lean on. We also do not take mental health as serious as we should. We do not see this as a first priority, when there are other pressing issues at hand. When there is mental health issues present there are usually other issues that are also present that may be a concern to a person as will, like drug addiction, poverty or homelessness that makes it almost impossible for the person to seek proper treatment I also think that there is a language barrier, cultural and religious difference when it comes to Mexican-Americans that prevents them from seeking treatment. I do believe that African-American and Mexican-American are less like then any other group to participate in talk therapy.
We are not taught to talk out problems out, especially to a stranger, besides this is not a quick fix. We want an instant fix not something we have to work on. There are still a few barriers to cross with helping ethnic groups understand the importance of mental health therapy and how we can help ourselves and love ones. We have to first start by having an open dialogue with our children. We need to let them know that it is ok to have feeling and the need to express them and talk them through. We also need to show the benefits of what mental health therapy can do for a person and that it is not a sign of weakness. I am a true believer that we all need some type of therapy in our lives at some point or another and it is nothing wrong with that.