Health Insurance

Health Insurance
Scientists theorize that depression may be caused by an imbalance of naturally occurring chemicals in the brain and body that affect you emotionally and physically. How serious depression becomes can vary. Depression can cause you to experience the world differently and may deprive you of your hopes and dreams.
Because depression is a medical illness like diabetes and heart disease, it can require treatment and help from a healthcare professional.
Further, even when depression is treated it may recur throughout your life. When symptoms don’t go away completely, the risk for depression coming back increases - but getting well is definitely possible.
Symptoms of depression can be emotional and physical and may chang e throughout your life. Emotional symptoms can include:
• Sadness
• Loss of interest or pleasure in activities you once enjoyed
• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt
• Trouble concentrating or keeping your mind on things
• Thinking a lot about your own death or planning suicide
Physical symptoms can include:
• Decrease or increase in appetite
• Feeling tired nearly all the time
• Significant weight gain or loss
• Sleeping too much or too little
• Slowing of thought processes or body movement
Other physical symptoms that can accompany depression include bodily aches and pains, headaches, backaches, and joint pain (such as in the shoulder). If you experience several of these symptoms every day for a period of at least two weeks, it is recommended that you talk to your healthcare professional.
Public health insurance coverage increased—and rates of uninsurance decreased—between 1999 and 2002 among two groups of low-income, U.S. citizen children: those with parents who are native or naturalized U.S. citizens and those with at least
one immigrant parent who is not a U.S. citizen (referred to as mixed-status families).1 The improvements followed efforts on the part of the states and the federal government to expand coverage of children under Medicaid and the State Childre ’s Health
Insurance Program (SCHIP) and the introduction of policies directed at
improving Medicaid and SCHIP access for immigrant and non-Englishspeaking families. Nonetheless, more than one in five citizen children in lowincome mixed-status families remained uninsured in 2002—a rate 74 percent higher than that of children with citizen parents. This Snapshot uses data from the 1999 and 2002 National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF) to examine the health insurance coverage2 of lowincome
citizen children.3 (In 2002, 72 percent of all children with noncitizen parents were themselves citizens and thus qualified for benefits on the same terms as citizen children with citizen parents.) The Snapshot also looks at differences in health insurance coverage between children whose parents or other caregivers responded to the survey in English and those whose family responded in Spanish. Limited English skills—like lack of citizenship—may prevent parents from applying for public benefits for their children (Holcomb et al. 2003).