COVID-19 pandemic and mental health among Hispanic/Latino/a immigrants in the USA: protocol for a scoping review

Abstract

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic has had drastic effects on worldwide mental health and laid bare health disparities and inequities among marginalised groups and racial/ethnic minoritised communities in the USA. This is especially the case among Hispanic/Latino/a immigrants who face numerous structural and socioeconomic barriers to well-being. The increased mental health burden on Hispanic/Latino/a immigrants may have far reaching effects if left unaddressed. Thus, by understanding further Hispanic/Latino/a immigrant mental health during the pandemic, communities and health providers may be able to better address this growing issue. This scoping review aims to assess and outline the current literature on the pandemic’s effects on Hispanic/Latino/a immigrant mental health in the USA, identify research gaps and areas of urgent concern, and inform future research and public health interventions and guidelines.Methods and analysisA scoping review following the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology will be conducted. The PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science: Core Collection databases and five grey literature sources will be searched for articles published in English from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2022. Two independent reviewers will screen the search results at title and abstract and then full text using Covidence with conflicts resolved by a third reviewer. Data collection will also be performed in duplicate using Microsoft Excel with discrepancies resolved by a third reviewer and consensus discussion.Ethics and disseminationEthics approval is not required for this scoping review. Results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal as well as presented at local and national conferences and meetings relevant to our field. Furthermore, to make our findings accessible to non-scientific audiences, we will use various mediums, such as graphical abstracts, policy briefs and fact sheets to share the results in both English and Spanish on different platforms.