Young girls from minority groups are anxious about undergoing medical exams, particularly when imaging is involved, a new study shows. The research may speak to the fears minority children have of the medical system, particularly if they come from families with limited economic means. The findings are published in BMC Psychiatry. [1]
The study from the University of California, Riverside, examined the mental health of 46 preadolescent Latina girls (ages 8-13) who completed an emotional processing test during an MRI scan. The research team tasked the girls with viewing happy and fearful images of human faces projected onto the scanner bore. Brain activity was measured throughout the MRI exam to gauge any threat stimulus response.
A pre-study psychological exam rated the level of anxiety of the girls from average to high. Those who experienced higher levels of anxiety exhibited increased momentary anxiety upon being placed into the MRI scanner. Furthermore, they showed an augmented amygdala-hippocampal response when presented with images of fearful faces, contrasting with their response to happy ones.
Moreover, girls from families with less economic stability were more prone to displaying a fearful response both upon entering the MRI machine and when confronted with images of fearful faces. The researchers wonder if this stems from inexperience with medical imaging practices due to a lack of resources.
“When interpreting the data, it is important not to misattribute the findings to an anxiety disorder or to a whole community when it is only momentary and situational anxiety,” study lead author Kalina Michalska, PhD, an associate professor of psychology, said in a statement. “Brain responses in experiments like ours need to be attributed not necessarily to the fact that the participants are, say, Latina, but to their historical experiences with science. Our participants had high anxiety because they were entering a space that has historically been hostile to them.”
The young girls not only suffered from “state anxiety”—which is fear based on a situation—but also “trait anxiety,” meaning they were in a constant low-fear state even when not being examined, Michalska and colleagues wrote.
The authors said the goal of the research is to raise awareness of just how terrifying an MRI can be for patients, especially young girls from minority backgrounds.
“Doctors can change the way they think about patients’ mental health and teachers can think differently about the mental health of their students,” Michalska said. “Our data show that socioeconomic status can play a significant role in patients’ and students’ anxiety and suggest that the scanning environment may be particularly anxiety-inducing for participants who feel marginalized relative to other members of society.”
To get a better understanding of how social experience and racial backgrounds correlate to fear of exams such an MRI, Michalka and her team plan to conduct further studies that factor in the lived experience of parents, specifically any history of ethnic discrimination.
The full study is available at the link below.
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