CDC warns Black, Hispanic men should seek treatment against anxiety, depression and other similar affections, based on the results of a recent medical survey. Medical experts have noticed that non-Hispanic black men have the tendency to ignore their health issues, unlike white men who seek medical help even for psychological problems.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was interested in determining the extent to which gender and race factors influence patients’ decisions when it comes to seeking medical help. They have thus, set the grounds for a new medical experiment to better study this matter.
CDC gathered a group of 21,000 men aged between 18 and 44 years. Respondents have been selected from different races and different social strata for a more complex view on the subject. They were handed questionnaires with an equal number of questions related to their day to day activities, to the anxiety or depression problems they have had in the past.
The other sections of the questionnaire were purposefully designed to help researchers gather information about the medical treatments that the men have used in the past. Moreover, experts have also asked respondents questions about their family income, their medical insurance and their ethnicity to establish whether these factors could have a strong influence on their decisions or not.
Results have shown that one in 10 men suffers from depression and/or anxiety, but the majority of the male patients refuse to recur to medical treatments. Medical experts have further inferred that 6 percent non-Hispanic black men have suffered from this mental affections, as opposed to the 8.5 percent non-Hispanic white men.
Even though black men suffer less from these affections, they are also less likely to seek medical help, according to medical statistics. Experts have estimated that only 26 percent of the black respondents in the study group receive medical treatment compared to 45 percent of the white individuals under medical observation.
The reasons behind the low medical treatment rates could go far beyond ethnicity, doctors have concluded. Questionnaire answers have shown that the non-Hispanic black respondents have also had financial problems which prevented them from getting proper medical care for their anxiety and depression issues.
39 percent of the non-Hispanic black participants were uninsured, whereas 13 percent of the whites had opted for a proper medical coverage in the past, doctors have informed. In their opinion, the U.S. medical system should offer better insurance services for these disadvantaged categories of the society.
In spite of the useful data that scientists at CDC have withdrawn from the recent experiment, they think further studies should pay attention to the social pressure that non-Hispanic black individuals may be subjected to. Patients belonging to these social strata may refuse to seek medical help because they are afraid of the possible prejudices that may be attributed to them.
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