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- Creators: School of International Letters and Cultures
- Creators: Allen, Angela
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Status: Published
Minority mental health patients face many health inequities and inequalities that may stem from implicit bias and a lack of cultural awareness from their healthcare providers. I analyzed the current literature evaluating implicit bias among healthcare providers and culturally specific life traumas that Latinos and African Americans face that can impact their mental health. Additionally, I researched a current mental health assessments tool, the Child and Adolescent Trauma Survey (CATS), and evaluated it for the use on Latino and African American patients. Face-to-face interviews with two healthcare providers were also used to analyze the CATS for its’ applicability to Latino and African American patients. Results showed that these assessments were not sufficient in capturing culturally specific life traumas of minority patients. Based on the literature review and analysis of the interviews with healthcare providers, a novel assessment tool, the Culturally Traumatic Events Questionnaire (CTEQ), was created to address the gaps that currently make up other mental health assessment tools used on minority patients.
Methods: Three databases were used to search for papers published after 2010 until October 2019 discussing obesity, overweight and TCM. No forms of Chinese medicine were excluded from the search. Studies were excluded if they did not meet the date criteria or if they overlapped with papers found in other databases.
Results: Six of the selected papers covered acupuncture (electro, balance or catgut embedding acupuncture methods) either jointly with other treatments or alone, one exclusively on moxibustion and three studies on three different types of TCM herbal medicine. Each study showed a statistically significant effect on body mass index (BMI) value decrease or total weight loss (TWL). The six acupuncture papers all showed statistical significance at the 95% CI against control groups (sham acupuncture or no acupuncture) and against before-treatment BMI values or TWL values.
Conclusion: Of the treatments reviewed, almost all acupuncture studies were shown to be consistently effective in treating overweight or obese individuals within this selection of studies, as well as in another meta-analysis. This may be due to acupuncture’s ties to a neuroendocrine mechanism. Future studies should further explore the neuroendocrine connection between acupuncture and weight loss. Herbal medication was also shown to have a significant effect in reducing weight in each study; however, two studies used mice or rats as subjects, therefore understanding the effects on human subjects is limited.
body weight. Microarray analysis identified 53 probe sets significantly altered post- ω-3PUFA, with APOE being one of the most upregulated genes. High dose of long chain ω-3PUFA supplementation modulates significant changes in plasma fatty acid profile, AT and systemic inflammation. These findings associate with significant improvement of insulin-stimulated glucose disposal. Unbiased microarray analysis of Sc fat biopsy identified APOE as the most differentially regulated gene after ω-3PUFA 22 supplementation. We speculate that ω-3PUFA increases macrophage-derived APOE mRNA levels with anti-inflammatory properties.