E-Mail
Low-income middle-aged African-American women with high blood pressure very commonly suffer from depression and should be better screened for this serious mental health condition, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The researchers found that in a sample of over 300 low-income, African-American women, aged 40-75, with uncontrolled hypertension, nearly 60 percent screened positively for a diagnosis of depression based on a standard clinical questionnaire about depressive symptoms.
The results appeared February 10 in
JAMA Psychiatry. Our findings suggest that low-income, middle-aged African-American women with hypertension really should be screened for depression symptoms, says study senior author Darrell Gaskin, PhD, William C. and Nancy F. Richardson Professor in Health Policy and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions in the Bloomberg School s Department of Health Policy and M