Health of Sonoma County Latinos comes into focus at forum

One in five Latinos suffered from a mental disorder within the past year, but despite the prevalence of depression and other mental issues, few seek treatment. For many, especially in rural areas, the lack of a nearby health facility or transportation means they will have to devote a large chunk of a day to seeing a doctor, Dr. Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, the founding director of the Center for Reducing Health Disparities, said Thursday.

“It’s a whole day’s work they lose. That’s a loss of wages,” said Aguilar-Gaxiola, also a clinical internal medicine professor at UC Davis and one of the keynote speakers at the annual Latino Health Forum, held at the Flamingo Conference Resort and Spa in Santa Rosa.

But simply building facilities in rural and disenfranchised communities won’t solve the problem alone, Aguilar-Gaxiola told hundreds of community advocates, health care professionals, medical students and social workers. To boost the number of Latinos seeking treatment, he said, counties and medical professionals need to address health care affordability, offer flexible hours to suit residents’ work schedules and provide services that are “culturally and linguistically appropriate.”

Even the de cor of a medical room can have an impact on whether a Latino will feel comfortable enough to return, ?Aguilar-Gaxiola said after his presentation. He said about 75 percent of Latinos who do seek medical treatment end up not returning after their first session.

“They must find the experience very difficult, for them not to return,” he said. “They need to feel at ease.”

Behavioral and mental health and their effects on the overall well-being of Latino residents in Sonoma County took center stage at the daylong forum, which featured workshops tackling topics from youth depression to positive parenting skills to racism and its impact on mental and physical health.

Providing Latinos with mental health services also has been a major challenge for medical professionals because of the cultural stigma that surrounds depression and other mental disorders, said Dr. Enrique Gonzalez-?Mendez, a Sonoma County family physician and UC San Francisco clinical professor who is chairman of the Latino Health Forum, now in its 22nd year.

He’d raised similar concerns while standing in the same room two weeks ago during a conference on the state of the county’s Latino residents organized by the leadership group Los Cien. He said only 1 in 11 Latinos with a mental health problem seeks a specialist.

Latinos often worry they “cannot fill their role as a mother or father” if they’re dealing with a mental health problem, he said.

“(We need) to demystify and remove all the taboos about feeling depressed,” Gonzalez-Mendez said before Thursday’s forum.

Many Latinos also don’t have medical insurance, making health care access more difficult.

Twenty-five percent of Latinos in the county are uninsured, according to Brian Vaughn, health policy director for the Sonoma County Department of Health Services and a forum keynote speaker. In comparison, 9 percent of non-Latinos are uninsured.

The medical issues Latinos face affect the larger community, as well, Aguilar-?Gaxiola said.

The low number of Latinos using mental health services, in particular, can come with significant consequences for both the individuals and the community, Aguilar-Gaxiola said. For example, he said, a person with a mental illness sees their life expectancy cut by 25 years, compared to someone without a mental illness. It also can cause disability or affect someone’s productivity at work or ability to keep a job.

He added those who wait to deal with a mental disorder often end up in the emergency room, making it more expensive and less effective to treat than it could have been in the early stages.

“It increases the cost overall,” he said. “It has impact on the economy.”

You can reach Staff ?Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@press?democrat.com.