State Department of Health's Equitable Funding Allocation Methodology to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among High-Risk and Underserved Populations.

The Washington State Department of Health developed an equitable funding allocation methodology incorporating quantitative and qualitative decision-making components. We describe the methodology and an implementation evaluation performed by an external evaluation team using the RE-AIM (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance) evaluation framework. The evaluation team concluded that the methodology was developed in a way that used a racial equity lens and prioritized intersectionalities in the communities that the funding was intended to serve.

An Exploratory Case Study of the Types of Resources Black Boys Use to Support Their Mental Health.

Black adolescent boys experience mental health challenges because of their exposure to a greater frequency and severity of psychosocial stressors. This study used a sample of Black boys at a high school in southeastern Michigan as a case study to understand the types of resources Black boys might use to support their mental health. After conducting a rigorous analysis of the study data using a rapid and an accelerated data reduction technique, four themes helped us answer the question: What kinds of mental health support resources are Black boys using? Four themes emerged from our analysis: , , , and .

Persistence, Impairment, Disability and Unmet Treatment of Lifetime and 12-Month Anxiety Disorders in Black Men and Women, 50 Years of Age and Older.

To examine anxiety disorders in aging Black adults. Using nationally representative data from the National Survey of American Life, we estimated lifetime/12-month prevalence of anxiety disorders in Black men and women, age 50+ ( = 1561). Disorder-specific persistence and severity, functional impairment, and mental health service utilization were investigated using multivariate regressions.

Mechanisms of Cardiometabolic Health Outcomes and Disparities: What Characteristics of Chronic Stressors are Linked to HPA-Axis Dysregulation?

Chronic stressors are associated with cardiometabolic health conditions and disparities. Mechanisms linking stressors and health remain poorly understood. Two cohort studies (Cardiac Rehabilitation And The Experience [CREATE] and Tracking Risk Identification for Adult Diabetes [TRIAD]) with harmonized variables were used to examine relationships between six types of chronic stressors in adulthood and Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis dysregulation, as indicated by blunted diurnal cortisol slopes, which are stress-sensitive biomarkers implicated in cardiometabolic health (merged = 213, mean age 61, 18% Black).

An Online Behavioral Health Intervention Promoting Mental Health, Manhood, and Social Support for Young Black Men: The YBMen Project.

Conventional definitions of mental health, manhood, and social support create barriers to accessing behavioral health care for Black men ages 18 to 30. Targeted behavioral health interventions sensitive to culture, social norms, and gender that circumvent these barriers are desperately needed to improve access and integrated care for this group. This article reports mixed methods findings from the 2017 iteration of the Young Black Men, Masculinities, and Mental Health (YBMen) project, a social media-based, psychoeducational program that promotes mental health, progressive definitions of manhood, and sustainable social support for Black men.

Substance Abuse Among Blacks Across the Diaspora.

Background: Lower rates of substance abuse are found among Black Americans compared to Whites, but little is known about differences in substance abuse across ethnic groups within the black population.

Objectives: We examined prevalence rates of substance abuse among Blacks across three geographic regions (US, Jamaica, Guyana). The study also sought to ascertain whether length of time, national context and major depressive episodes (MDE) were associated with substance abuse.

Ethnic and Gender Differences in Help Seeking for Substance Disorders Among Black Americans.

This paper uses the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) to examine within group differences regarding help-seeking for substance disorders among a US sample of African American and Caribbean Black men and women. We examined ethnic and gender differences in the type of providers sought for substance disorder treatment, as well as reasons for avoiding treatment. Results indicate that overall, few ethnic differences exist; however, African Americans are more likely than Caribbean Blacks to seek help from human service professionals (including a religious or spiritual advisor) and from informal sources of treatment such as self-help groups.

Prevalence of DSM-IV intermittent explosive disorder in Black adolescents: Findings from the National Survey of American Life, Adolescent Supplement.

Little is known about the epidemiology of (4th ed.; ) intermittent explosive disorder (IED) in adolescents, and no information is currently available regarding the relationship between race/ethnicity and IED among Black youth in the United States. Using the World Health Organization World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview (Adolescent Version), we estimated the prevalence, severity, and disability of IED in a national, probability sample of African American and Caribbean Black youth (ages 13–17) from the National Survey of American Life, Adolescent Supplement.

The mental health of US Black women: the roles of social context and severe intimate partner violence.

Objective: Black women continue to have rates of mental health conditions that can be negative for their well-being. This study examined the contribution of social and contextual factors and severe physical intimate partner violence on the mental health of US Black women (African-American and Caribbean Black).

Setting: Data were largely collected via in-person community interviews at participants' homes.

Urban vs Rural Residence and the Prevalence of Depression and Mood Disorder Among African American Women and Non-Hispanic White Women.

Importance: There is a paucity of research among African Americans and rural residents. Little is known about the association between urbanicity and depression or about the interaction of urbanicity, race/ethnicity, and sex on depression and mood disorder prevalence.

Objective: To examine the interaction of urbanicity and race/ethnicity on lifetime and 12-month major depressive disorder (MDD) and mood disorder prevalence for African American women and non-Hispanic white women.

Discrimination and social anxiety disorder among African-Americans, Caribbean blacks, and non-Hispanic whites.

The present study investigated the relationship between discrimination and social anxiety disorder (SAD) in a sample of African-Americans, Caribbean blacks, and non-Hispanic whites using the National Survey of American Life, the most comprehensive study of psychopathology among American blacks to date (N = 6082). Previous work has highlighted a strong association between discrimination and mental health symptoms (Keith, Lincoln, Taylor, and Jackson [Sex Roles 62:48-59, ]; Kessler, Mickelson, and Williams [J Health Soc Behav 40:208-230, 1999]; Soto, Dawson-Andoh, and BeLue [J Anxiety Disord 25:258-265, ]). However, few studies have examined the effects of particular types of discrimination on specific anxiety disorders or among different black subgroups.

"Their depression is something different . . . it would have to be": findings from a qualitative study of black women's perceptions of depression in black men.

This study reports findings from the Black Women's Perceptions of Black Men's Depression (BWP) study, which included eight focus groups with Black women (N = 46) from southeastern Michigan. Four themes illustrated the impressions of Black women from different socioeconomic backgrounds: Black men's depression is a cultured and gendered phenomenon, the role of Black women in Black men's depression, intergenerational differences with how depression is handled by Black men, and the need (and ways) to reach Black men with depression resources. Results underscore not only the importance of understanding the kind of depression in Black men that meets criteria described by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) but also the psychological distress that may coexist with (or be separate from) DSM depression.

Major depressive disorder among older African Americans, Caribbean blacks, and non-Hispanic whites: secondary analysis of the National Survey of American Life.

Background: Previous epidemiological and clinical research on mental disorders has treated Blacks as a homogenous group and yet Blacks of Caribbean descent and African Americans differ with respect to ethnicity, national heritage, living circumstances, and immigration status. The purpose of this article is to examine the prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) among African Americans, Caribbean Blacks, and non-Hispanic whites aged 50 and older with data on psychiatric and physical comorbidity, mental illness severity, and service use.

Methods: Secondary analysis of data from the National Survey of American Life, a national household probability sample of African Americans, Caribbean Blacks, and non-Hispanic Whites in the United States, were used (n = 1,950).

Religious involvement and DSM-IV 12-month and lifetime major depressive disorder among African Americans.

This study explores relationships between lifetime and 12-month DSM-IV major depressive disorder and religious involvement within a nationally representative sample of African American adults (n = 3,570). MDD was assessed using the DSM-IV World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Multivariate findings indicate that reading religious materials were positively associated with 12-month (odds ratio [OR], 1.

Panic disorder among African Americans, Caribbean blacks and non-Hispanic whites.

Introduction: This study investigated co-morbidities, level of disability, service utilization and demographic correlates of panic disorder (PD) among African Americans, Caribbean blacks and non-Hispanic white Americans.

Methods: Data are from the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) and the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication (NCS-R).

Results: Non-Hispanic whites are the most likely to develop PD across the lifespan compared to the black subgroups.

Lessons learned from the clinical reappraisal study of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview with Latinos.

Given recent adaptations of the World Health Organization's World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview (WMH-CIDI), new methodological studies are needed to evaluate the concordance of CIDI diagnoses with clinical diagnostic interviews. This paper summarizes lessons learned from a clinical reappraisal study done with US Latinos. We compare CIDI diagnoses with independent clinical diagnosis using the World Mental Health Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (WMH-SCID 2000).

Obsessive-compulsive disorder among African Americans and blacks of Caribbean descent: results from the National Survey of American Life.

Background: There is limited research regarding the nature and prevalence of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) among various racial and ethnic subpopulations within the United States, including African Americans and blacks of Caribbean descent. Although heterogeneity within the black population in the United States has largely been ignored, notable differences exist between blacks of Caribbean descent and African Americans with respect to ethnicity, national heritage, and living circumstances. This is the first comprehensive examination of OCD among African Americans and blacks of Caribbean descent.

Prevalence and distribution of major depressive disorder in African Americans, Caribbean blacks, and non-Hispanic whites: results from the National Survey of American Life.

Context: Little is known about the relationship between race/ethnicity and depression among US blacks.

Objective: To estimate the prevalence, persistence, treatment, and disability of depression in African Americans, Caribbean blacks, and non-Hispanic whites in the National Survey of American Life.

Design: A slightly modified adaptation of the World Health Organization World Mental Health version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview.

Clinical calibration of DSM-IV diagnoses in the World Mental Health (WMH) version of the World Health Organization (WHO) Composite International Diagnostic Interview (WMHCIDI).

An overview is presented of the rationale, design, and analysis plan for the WMH-CIDI clinical calibration studies. As no clinical gold standard assessment is available for the DSM-IV disorders assessed in the WMH-CIDI, we adopted the goal of calibration rather than validation; that is, we asked whether WMH-CIDI diagnoses are 'consistent' with diagnoses based on a state-of-the-art clinical research diagnostic interview (SCID; Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV) rather than whether they are 'correct'. Consistency is evaluated both at the aggregate level (consistency of WMH-CIDI and SCID prevalence estimates) and at the individual level (consistency of WMH-CIDI and SCID diagnostic classifications).