By Vincent Lim
At an international conference organized by the World Psychiatric Association, William A. Vega, executive director of the Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging at the USC School of Social Work, discussed the mental health challenges facing Latinos in the United States.
The First International Conference on Cultural Psychiatry in the Spanish-Speaking World was held from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1 in Barcelona, Spain. The conference is one of many gatherings organized by the association every year for its 135 psychiatric member societies that represent 200,000 psychiatrists from 117 different countries.
The goal of this particular gathering was to bring together researchers from Spanish-speaking nations to exchange knowledge and ideas about how to address growing concerns about the mental health of migrants.
Roughly two-thirds of Latinos over 35 years old in the United States are immigrants. Vega spoke about the unique mental health issues that Latinos must confront in the United States.