Hearts, minds, sugar and sleep: Health/mental health in Black elders

22nd December 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Frederick H. Lowe
Contributing Writer

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Special from Blackmans-Street.Today and New America Media) — Researchers on health conditions among older African Americans linked the development of chronic illness to mental health at November’s annual scientific meeting of the Geronto­logical Society of America in Washington, D.C.

One study found that African Americans who suffer from Chro­nic Obstructive Pulmonary Disea­se (COPD) are diagnosed with depression at three times the rate of Blacks without the illness.

Depressed, Unable to Function

A 2012 nationwide-telephone survey of 39,691 Blacks found that 2,925 African Americans who were diagnosed as depressed by healthcare professionals also were suffering from COPD, said Esme Fuller-Thomson, PhD, who holds the Sandra Rotman Chair in Social Work at the University of Toronto.

Some 38.1 percent of African Americans with COPD reported they had been diagnosed with a depressive disorder compared to 12.5 percent of those without the condition, Fuller-Thomson said.

Depression affects one’s ability to function and often interferes with a person’s ability to sleep and eat in healthy ways. In some cases, individuals sleep too much or too little, Fuller-Thomson said.

COPD, a lung disease that makes breathing difficult, is the third leading cause of death in the United States after heart disease and cancer. In 2009 — the latest figures available –133,965 people in the U.S., including 4,060 Black men and 3,479 Black women — died from COPD, according to the American Lung Association.

Among the chief causes of COPD are smoking and inhaling second-hand smoke, air pollution and occupational dusts, Fuller-Thomson said.

“We were surprised at the magnitude [of the incidence of cases],” she added. “Three fold is very high. It is difficult to manage these two co-morbid conditions.”

Among African Americans with COPD, the odds of depressive disorders were higher among women ages 40 to 64; the obese; those who never graduated from high school; and individuals who were divorced, widowed or never married, according the study by Fuller-Thomson and Gloria Carr, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Memphis Loewenberg School of Nursing in Memphis, Tenn. Carr is a registered nurse.

Diabetes and Stress

A new study on race and mental health by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) School of Medicine found that stress did not appear to lead to increased levels of depression in African Americans, but it may lead to higher levels of diabetes.

This finding is counter to a number of studies that have shown that stress can lead to depression with African Americans suffering higher levels of stress than whites.

The results of the new study, titled “Hearts and Minds, Stress and Sugar: Disparities and Difference in Mental and Physical Health,” are surprising, but there could be a logical explanation, said VCU’s Briana Mezuk, an assistant professor at who coordinated the research.

Blacks are more likely than whites to “self-treat” stress with overeating and a sedentary lifestyle, while whites generally have better access to medical treatment for their stress, Mezuk said. Physical inactivity and obesity are associated with type 2 diabetes, the most common type. Overall, diabetes is 60 percent more common in African Americans than in whites, according to WebMD.

“Blacks that treat their stress with smoking, drinking and a bad diet are more likely to develop diabetes,” said Mezuk. “Stressed whites that engage in the same unhealthy behavior are more likely to develop depression.”

Prescription: A Good Night’s Sleep

One prescription for better overall health is—a good night’s sleep.

“Poor sleep is a major public health concern that is highly prevalent among older Blacks,” said Roland J. Thorpe, Jr., PhD, and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who organized a GSA conference symposium that presented several studies on “Sleep in Older Blacks: The Role of Psychosocial and Health-Related Factors.”

Thorpe and colleagues emphasized that poor sleep is associated with common health conditions, such as hypertension and obesity, as well as impaired cognitive functioning in this population.

One study examined obese elderly Blacks in a Baltimore housing project and found that they slept an average of six hours or less at night instead of the recommended eight or nine hours and that rapid eye-movement sleep or REM sleep often did not occur.

The research, involved two groups consisting mostly of women. The first group included 602 individuals and the second group included 450 individuals, Thorpe said. The participants had a body mass index, which measures weight-to-height ratio, of more than 30, an indicator of obesity.

Disrupted Sleep

“They often did not go into REM sleep [the most-restful part of the sleep cycle] or they did less often,” said LaBarron K. Hill, PhD, of Duke University’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development.

He was the lead researcher of a three-year study of how depression symptoms and perceived stress affect the quality of sleep in older African Americans. People involved in the study would often wake in the early morning hours and not be able to go back to sleep.

However, Thorpe, who organized the symposium, observed that the study suggest further research to answer questions about health outcomes. Although it focused on the sleeping habits of obese Blacks, question remain on whether the participants were obese before their sleeping problems emerged or if they became obese after they surfaced, he said.

The researchers agreed that because the number of older Blacks is projected to increase over the next 30 years, identifying and understanding factors that prevent or impede sleep quantity or quality should be a high priority.

This article originally published in the December 22, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.