Syndemic Suffering ─ Social Distress, Depression, and Diabetes Among Mexican Immigrant Women

Seeking insight into the clustering of depression and diabetes among poor Mexican immigrant women in the United States, Mendenhall (U. of Witwatersrand, South Africa) adopts a "syndemic" (a term that combines the concepts of "synergy" and "epidemic") model for considering how adverse social conditions such as poverty and oppressive social relationships stress populations and expose them to clusters of interacting diseases. She proposes a model she calls the VIDDA Syndemic to illustrate the five core dimensions of health and social well-being that influence the lives of the immigrant women suffering from diabetes that she studied for this work, with the acronym VIDDA standing for: structural, symbolic, and everyday forms of violence (V), immigration-related stresses such as social isolation and fear of deportation (I), depression (D), diabetes (D), and interpersonal abuse (A). Examining the interrelationships between the dimensions of the VIDDA Syndemic, she presents a broader understanding of health dynamics than a narrow focus on epidemics and comorbidities provides and points the way towards strategies for reducing syndemics among the poor. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)