Reducing Mental Health Disparities Among Latinxs With a Telenovela Intervention

Telenovela video interventions are a low-resource, low-cost methodology developed to diminish the treatment-provider gap (Heilemann et al., 2017). Research shows that telenovela interventions represent an acceptable (Heilemann et al., 2018) and potent (Heilemann et al., 2017) intervention option for disseminating information to the Latinx population. Prior research utilizing transmedia telenovela interventions that include a telenovela component have demonstrated some effectiveness at reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression among Latinxs (Heilemann et al., 2017; Kajiyama et al., 2018) as have fotonovelas (Sanchez et al., 2019). To date researchers have not investigated how the telenovela approach combined with a transdiagnostic treatment paradigm might help reduce behavioral health disparities among Spanish-speaking Latinxs given that such an intervention would be easily disseminable and target the two most common disorders observed among this population. The primary aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of an transdiagnostic telenovela video intervention in reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms using a pre/post-test design with Spanish-speaking Latinxs.

Inclusion criteria

• 18 years or older
• Identify as Latinx
• Prefer behavioral health services in Spanish
• Meet the DSM criteria for any mild to moderate anxiety disorder
• Ownership of a smartphone

Exclusion criteria

• Suicidality
• Psychosis
• Bipolar disorder
• Severe anxiety disorders
• Severe depressive disorders
• Homicidality