跳至主要内容

Mental Health Needs in Vietnamese American Communities Affected by the Gulf Oil Spill

In recent years, the Vietnamese Gulf Coast communities have endured multiple natural, as well as man-made disasters, including both hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon (BP) Oil Spill. The long-term damage to the economic and psychological well-being of the people who are dependent on the fisheries and seafood industry in this region remains unclear. The objectives of this study were to examine the impact of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on the Vietnamese American Gulf Coast communities and to offer recommendations on how to effectively work with this underserved population.

Sixty Vietnamese adults across the three States participated in the focus group study. Of this number, 39 (65%) were females, with an age range from 28 - 65 years old. On average, participants had had about 8 years of education in Vietnam, with the number of years ranging from 3 - 12 years. With regard to marital status, 86% were married, 10% were single, and 4% were divorced/ separated. Approximately 77% had worked in the seafood industry and about 92% indicated that they spoke English “not very well”. Audio recordings of the focus group discussions were transcribed, recorded on a spread sheet, and categorized into themes by two independent Vietnamese-speaking individuals. A third researcher, also fluent in Vietnamese, checked and compared the spread sheets for accuracy and reliability.

Nearly all participants reported being negatively affected by the oil spill disaster. They described loss of income (59%), loss of employment (27%), and inability to pay bills (12%). High levels of stress, anxiety and depression, as well as an increase in behavioral problems were reported. None of the participants claimed to know where or how to seek help for mental health problems.

In conclusion, the oil spill disaster has had significant negative consequences for the economic well-being, family functioning, and behavioral and mental health status of the Vietnamese American gulf coast communities. Implications and strategies for working with this population are offered.


Article by Dung Ngo, et al, from USA.

Full access: http://mrw.so/2436M6

Image by Travel Care Air, from Flickr-cc.

评论

发表评论

此博客中的热门博文

Electron Spin and Proton Spin in the Hydrogen and Hydrogen-Like Atomic Systems

Read full paper at: http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=52202#.VIj7tMnQrzE Author(s) Stanisław Olszewski * Affiliation(s) Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland . ABSTRACT The mechanical angular momentum and magnetic moment of the electron and proton spin have been calculated semiclassically with the aid of the uncertainty principle for energy and time. The spin effects of both kinds of the elementary particles can be expressed in terms of similar formulae. The quantization of the spin motion has been done on the basis of the old quantum theory. It gives a quantum number n = 1/2 as the index of the spin state acceptable for both the electron and proton ...
发表评论
阅读全文

Incorporation of High-Altitude Balloon Experiment in High School Science Classrooms

High-altitude balloon is a balloon, filled usually with helium or hydrogen that ascends into an area called “near space” or stratosphere. The most common type of high-altitude balloons are weather balloons. Other purposes include use as a platform for experiments in the upper atmosphere. Modern balloons generally contain electronic equipment such as radio transmitters, cameras, or satellite navigation systems, such as GPS receivers. The mission of the High-Altitude Balloon Experiment (HABE) is to acquire supporting data, validate enabling technologies, and resolve critical acquisition, tracking, and pointing (ATP) and fire control issues in support of future space-based precision pointing experiments. The use of high-altitude balloons offers a relatively low-cost, low-vibration test platform, a recoverable and reusable payload, worldwide launch capability, and a 'near- space' emulation of the future space systems operational scenarios. More recently, several university...
1 条评论
阅读全文

Remarks on the Complexity of Signed k-Domination on Graphs

Read  full  paper  at: http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=53574#.VMnXsCzQrzE Author(s)    Chuan-Min Lee 1 , Cheng-Chien Lo 1 , Rui-Xin Ye 2 , Xun Xu 2 , Xiao-Han Shi 2 , Jia-Ying Li 2 Affiliation(s) 1 Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, Ming Chuan University, The First American University in Asia, Taoyuan, Taiwan, Chinese Taipei . 2 Department of Electronic Information Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China . ABSTRACT This paper is motivated by the concept of the signed k-domination problem and dedicated to the complexity of the problem on graphs. For any fixed nonnegative integer k, we show that the signed k-domination problem is NP-complete for doubly chordal graphs. For strongly chordal graphs and distance-hereditary graphs, we show that the signed k-domination problem can be solved in polynomial time. We also show that the problem is linear-time solvable for trees, interval graphs, and chord...
发表评论
阅读全文