Intersection of race-ethnicity and gender in depression care: screening, access, and minimally adequate treatment

Treatment moderators and effectiveness of Engagement and Counseling for Latinos intervention on worry reduction in a low-income primary care sample

OBJECTIVE

We conducted a secondary analysis of randomized controlled trial data to determine if the Engagement and Counseling for Latinos (ECLA) intervention, a brief, evidence-based, and culturally adapted cognitive-behavioral intervention specifically designed for and effective at treating depression, also reduced co-occurring worry symptoms. We also explored whether delivery modality (telephone, face-to-face) and sociodemographic patient characteristics moderated treatment effectiveness.

METHOD

Between May 2011 and September 2012, low-income Latino primary care patients (N = 257) with depression from Boston and San Juan were randomized to usual care (n = 86), face-to-face ECLA (n = 84), or telephone ECLA (n = 87) and completed a psychosocial assessment at baseline and 4 months after randomization. We used intention-to-treat analyses with linear regression models with change in worry (4 months from randomization) as the primary outcome and treatment condition as the primary predictor.

RESULTS

Patients in ECLA experienced significant reductions in worry at 4 months from randomization than those in usual care (PSWQΔ = -3.28, p < .05). Among patients receiving ECLA, those in the telephone condition exhibited greater worry reductions than those in the face-to-face condition (telephone: M = -7.83, SD = 11.45; face-to-face: M = -6.73, SD = 12.23; p < .05). Employment status was the only significant treatment moderator. Unemployed patients did not exhibit any changes in worry irrespective of condition, whereas employed patients exhibited the greatest worry reductions across conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

Although worry was not a treatment target in ECLA, it also reduced worry among low-income Latinos, which suggests ECLA may have transdiagnostic clinical implications. Telephone-delivered ECLA might hold promise for increasing the uptake of mental health care among employed low-income Latinos. (PsycINFO Database Record

Disparities at the intersection of marginalized groups

PURPOSE

Mental health disparities exist across several dimensions of social inequality, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender. Most investigations of health disparities focus on one dimension. Recent calls by researchers argue for studying persons who are marginalized in multiple ways, often from the perspective of intersectionality, a theoretical framework applied to qualitative studies in law, sociology, and psychology. Quantitative adaptations are emerging but there is little guidance as to what measures or methods are helpful.

METHODS

Here, we consider the concept of a joint disparity and its composition, show that this approach can illuminate how outcomes are patterned for social groups that are marginalized across multiple axes of social inequality, and compare the insights gained with that of other measures of additive interaction. We apply these methods to a cohort of young men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, examining disparities for black men with low early life SES vs. white men with high early life SES across several outcomes that predict mental health, including unemployment, wages, and incarceration.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

We report striking disparities in each outcome, but show that the contribution of race, SES, and their intersection varies.