Hard-hit by Covid-19, Latinos bear mental health burden 8 months into pandemic

Ana Urbina is so afraid of contracting Covid-19 that she even worries about going outside to throw out the garbage. Staying home all the time means Urbina is watching more TV than usual — including the news, which then increases her anxiety.

“I am too stressed,” said Urbina, 60, a Miami resident who’s diabetic, disabled and immunocompromised. “The state of my health is becoming more complicated, and that stresses me.”

Urbina is among the roughly 40 percent of Latinos nationwide who reported experiencing frequent symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, according to an analysis from April 23 to Nov. 9 by the National Center for Health Statistics in partnership with the Census Bureau. The rate peaked in mid-July and at the beginning of November when nearly 50 percent of Latinos reported experiencing such symptoms.

Anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms consistently remained at roughly 30 percent among white and Asian Americans while Black Americans reported similar symptomatic patterns, compared to Latinos.

Latinos have been disproportionately affected by the health and economic consequences of the pandemic, including experiencing a disproportionately high percent of Covid-19 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Latinos are three times more likely to become infected with the virus and nearly five times more likely to be hospitalized than non-Hispanic whites.

People “report being very concerned about financial matters, testing positive for Covid-19 themselves, and feeling more isolated,” said Paul Velez, the chief executive of the Borinquen Medical Centers in Miami.

Anxiety and depression can have physical effects like severe headaches, stomach pains, chills and difficulty breathing. These symptoms overlap with those of Covid-19, for instance, so it can create an extra layer of panic. The worrying can worsen the symptoms, said Marisa Echenique, a clinical psychologist at the University of Miami and associate professor in the university’s department of psychiatry.

“This is noticeable among Hispanic elderly females or mothers who try to be superwomen and help everyone all the time," Echenique said. "Everyone’s problem is their problems."

'Grief is actually everywhere'

At Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York, Dr. Vladimir Gasca was working closely with many Latino families who had relatives hospitalized with Covid-19, especially during the early days of the pandemic when the city was the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis.

“In our hospital, we had hundreds of deaths, disproportionately among the Latino population,” said Gasca, Elmhurst Hospital’s director of psychiatry and behavioral health services. He said that during the early stages of the pandemic, anyone who was hospitalized and intubated had a low potential for recovery.

"Psychologists would call the families to prepare them for what will be the ultimate demise of their loved ones," Gasca said. "And once they actually passed, we continued to provide treatment services completely for free over the phone to hundreds of families in the community.”

For Dr. Fabrizzio Delgado, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, the growing mental health toll the pandemic has taken on Latinos in his community has become more apparent since October, when a rise in coronavirus cases and deaths made El Paso, Texas, the new epicenter of the pandemic. More than 80 percent of the city’s population is Hispanic.

Many of Delgado’s patients report feeling excessive worry, inability to sleep, insomnia and lack of energy, he said. “Grief is actually everywhere right now, either because people lost their family members or because they lost their job or because they lost normalcy in their lives.”