PSY 124 Health Disparities

Image by  silviarita  from  Pixabay        Upon reading  NYT Magazine: America at Hunger's Edge , I found it gut-wrenching. It is truly sad about this situation and how many people are facing food insecurity. Personally, I grew up with food insecurity as well, so most of my diet growing up was processed foods because it is cheaper and we could have more food that was canned and processed than the food that was fresh.      Over the years that governments' aid toward low-income families has been slowly evolving. At first many of the products, they could buy were all mainly processed foods, but now we're slowing shifting towards a healthier diet. Though there were a strong push and heavy encouragement the prices of healthier foods were still much higher than processed foods.      When the Covid-19 hit, it made it much harder for low-income families. The labor participation rate dropped and reached its all-time low. This situation further pushed more families in the United Stat

Based on the film "Unnatural Causes," please describe where you would fit on the ladder?       When it comes to the Unnatural Causes documentary, I realized that I need to take better care of my health, and I need to make sure I learn how to relieve my stress. I come from a low-income family. My mother is a single mother with two children, which I am the oldest of. I helped my mother raise my little brother. Even now, as a college student, my mother struggles a lot financially. To help her, I work full-time, and I go to school full time.      While watching this video, it made me realize a lot about my family. All three of us are very unhealthy; we are all overweight, battling our own health problems. When it comes to me, my health reached an all-time low in college. My mother kept blaming the school for my bad health problems, but I kept ignoring her. She has begged me countless times to drop out of school because she eas worried I would die, but I didn't believe that sc

Cartoon of students isolated at home amid COVID-19 pandemic. /VCG Currently, there is a pandemic, the air quality is getting worse due to fires, locusts are terrorizing the earth, hurricanes almost every month, earthquakes (6+) happening at least once a week somewhere in the world, Saharan Dust,  killer hornets attacking bees, etc. 2020 is an eventful year, almost giving us a new surprise every month. Speaking of new surprises, there is also a new virus that the glaciers are melting. Virus species and strains that we've never encountered or seen before. The scientisits they identified 33 virus groups, out of the 28 of which were completely new to science. (https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a30643717/viruses-found-melting-glacier/)  As a first-generation, low-income student, I am currently working full-time this academic year. I am now trying to balance my night shift job with my morning classes. I've been struggling with my sleep schedule. I'm very grateful th

Do I consider myself to be healthy?      To be able to answer this question, I first have to understand what it means to be healthy. Though there are many categories of health such as financial, social, spiritual, physical, intellectual, environmental, mental, etc.. Today I will be talking more about physical health and having a healthy mind because I believe many these three factors affect the other categories, so if any of these three are unhealthy we can easily become unhealthy in categories that are connected to it.          It is true that physical health is very important, how can we move and take care of all the tasks we have planned out each day? How healthy the mind is, it is able to show us how we respond to situations. Do we respond to things in a healthy manner, like taking criticism correctly by working towards improving yourself? Are we the type to respond to things in an unhealthy manner bottling our emotions up and having them let go in uncontrollable times so that we u

  Source: Thinkstock     The current situation we are facing, it has brought to light many problems that have been covered, specifically health disparities. My view of a health disparity is the inequality of health treatment within the disadvantaged populations. The CDC explains is as, "Health disparities are preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations."  According to the Office of Behavioral Health Equity (OBHE) within The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Blacks and Latinos have substantially lower access to mental health and substance use treatment. In the paper,  Double Jeopardy: COVID-19 and Behavioral Health Disparities for Black and Latino Communities in the U.S. , it underlines the health disparities and the problems that people of color are facing during the pandemic.     Personally, I think the reason why