Corina Benjet

• PhD
• National Institute of Psychiatry Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz

Background Perceived need for treatment is a first step along the pathway to effective mental health treatment. Perceived need encompasses a person’s recognition that they have a problem and their belief that professional help is needed to manage the problem. These two components could have different predictors. Methods Respondents aged 18+ years...

Objective: Untreated mental disorders are important among low-and middle-income country (LMIC) university students in Latin America, where barriers to treatment are high. Scalable interventions are needed. This study compared transdiagnostic self-guided and guided internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (i-CBT) with treatment as usual (TAU)...

Mental health disparities have been reported among sexual minority individuals; minority stress theory posits that such disparities are a result of stigma and discrimination. We estimated the prevalence of mental disorders across sexual orientation groups among first-year college students and whether differences across sexual orientation groups var...

Background: Data from the World Mental Health (WMH) surveys on the coverage cascade has underscored the importance of perceived need for seeking treatment of mental disorders. However, little research has focused on treatment contact after adjusting for perceived need. We do so here in analysis of WMH data. Methods: The WMH data considered here...

Background Web-based cognitive behavioral therapy (wb-CBT) is a scalable way to reach distressed university students. Guided wb-CBT is typically superior to self-guided wb-CBT over short follow-up periods, but evidence is less clear over longer periods. Objective This study aimed to compare short-term (3 months) and longer-term (12 months) aggrega...

Background: Deaths from suicide are a tragic yet preventable cause of mortality. Quantifying the burden of suicide to understand its geographical distribution, temporal trends, and variation by age and sex is an essential step in suicide prevention. We aimed to present a comprehensive set of global, regional, and national estimates of suicide burd...

The aim of this study was to identify psychological and physical correlates of Quality of Life (QOL) in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). A total of 146 adult patients participated, of which 67.12% receiving an autologous HSCT and 32.87% an allogeneic HSCT. The sample included 63.01% male patients with a mean age o...

Background High unmet need for treatment of mental disorders exists throughout the world. An understanding of barriers to treatment is needed to develop effective programs to address this problem. Methods Data on barriers were obtained from face-to-face interviews in 22 community surveys across 19 countries (n = 102,812 respondents aged ≥ 18 years...

Importance Accurate baseline information about the proportion of people with mental disorders who receive effective treatment is required to assess the success of treatment quality improvement initiatives. Objective To examine the proportion of mental and substance use disorders receiving guideline-consistent treatment in multiple countries. Desi...

This second edition of the Oxford Textbook of Community Mental Health addresses recent changes and achievements, current controversies, and future challenges while emphasizing areas of convergence, where social values, health, medical sciences, and policy formation converge and meet. This edition also features a new section on global mental health,...

Background Substance use disorders (SUDs), encompassing alcohol (AUDs) and drug use disorders (DUDs), are significant global public health concerns. While SUDs are well-documented worldwide, data on their prevalence and impact in Saudi Arabia remain scarce. This study investigates the epidemiology and burden of SUDs in Saudi Arabia using data from...

Background Heterogeneity of treatment effects (HTEs) can occur because of either differential treatment compliance or differential treatment effectiveness. This distinction is important, as it has action implications, but it is unclear how to distinguish these two possibilities statistically in precision treatment analysis given that compliance is...

Background To scale up mental health care in low-resource settings, digital interventions must consider cultural fit. Despite the findings that culturally adapted digital interventions have greater effectiveness, there is a lack of empirical evidence of interventions that have been culturally adapted or their adaptation documented. Objective This...

Research on the implementation of community gatekeeper training interventions for suicide prevention in Spanish-speaking countries is limited. Gatekeepers identify warning signs of suicidal behavior in at-risk population and refer them to specialized mental health care. To identify factors that influence the implementation of evidence-based practic...

Although the short-term efficacy of internet-delivered cognitive-behavioral therapy (i-CBT) is well-established, its long-term efficacy remains understudied. Robust variance estimation meta-analysis was thus conducted across guided and self-guided i-CBT, synthesizing data from 154 randomized controlled trials (N = 45,335) with ≥ 12-month follow-ups...

Objective: We aim to evaluate whether a wide range of baseline mental disorders predict Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) one to three years later, among university students. Methods: Prospective cohort study with a follow-up period of one to three years (September 2018-June 2022) in 6 Mexican universities. Participants were first-year university s...

BACKGROUND To scale up mental health care in low-resource settings, digital interventions must consider cultural fit. Despite the findings that culturally adapted digital interventions have greater effectiveness, there is a lack of empirical evidence of interventions that have been culturally adapted or their adaptation documented. OBJECTIVE To do...

Purpose: While internet gaming disorder has been clinically delimited, we still know little about its mental health determinants. We aim to evaluate whether a wide range of baseline mental disorders predict Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) one to three years later, among first year university students in Mexico. Methods: This is a prospective cohort...

Objectives The longitudinal associations between DSM-5 Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) and suicide-related ideation and behaviors have not been explored. In this study, we therefore seek to examine the association between baseline IGD and incident suicide ideation, plans, and attempts. Methods This is a prospective cohort study of 2586 Mexican coll...

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) genetics are characterized by lower discoverability than most other psychiatric disorders. The contribution to biological understanding from previous genetic studies has thus been limited. We performed a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies across 1,222,882 individuals of European anc...

Los adolescentes que viven con VIH (AVVIH) presentan barreras para su adherencia al tratamiento antirretroviral (TAR), las cuales están vinculadas a pocos conocimientos sobre su enfermedad y tratamiento. Las características de los servicios médicos de atención pública requieren de intervenciones breves que se adecúen a las necesidades de sus pacien...

This research aims to understand and describe the etiology and mechanisms that maintain the association between alcohol consumption and violence perpetrated by Mexican men against their female partners. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted using the focus group technique, with the participation of 14 men recruited through a marketing camp...

Introduction Although the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the mental health of vulnerable populations, such as adolescent mothers, very few studies have documented the prevalence of postpartum depression (PPD) in this population. Objective a) Determine the frequency of PPD (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale [EPDS] ≥ 9) in adolescent mothe...

Antecedentes: Los trastornos mentales constituyen una de las principales causas de años vividos con discapacidad, si bien no se dispone de estimaciones recientes sobre su magnitud. Objetivo: Reportar las tendencias de prevalencia de trastornos mentales, los años vividos con discapacidad y los años de vida saludables perdidos por sexo, edad y entid...

Objective: Untreated mental disorders are important among low- and middle-income country (LMIC) university students in Latin America, where barriers to treatment are high. Scalable interventions are needed. This study compared transdiagnostic self-guided and guided internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (i-CBT) with treatment as usual (TAU...

Mexico is the third Latin American country with the most children and adolescents living with human immunodeficiency virus (ALHIV). There is a lack of information on the characteristics of this population. We aimed to describe the social and mental health characteristics of Mexican ALHIV. A census was conducted of all adolescent patients with HIV a...

Aims To measure the independent consequences of community‐level armed conflict beatings on alcohol use disorders (AUD) among males in Nepal during and after the 2000–2006 conflict. Design A population‐representative panel study from Nepal, with precise measures of community‐level violent events and subsequent individual‐level AUD in males. Females...

Background Despite their documented efficacy, substantial proportions of patients discontinue antidepressant medication (ADM) without a doctor's recommendation. The current report integrates data on patient-reported reasons into an investigation of patterns and predictors of ADM discontinuation. Methods Face-to-face interviews with community sampl...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) genetics are characterized by lower discoverability than most other psychiatric disorders. The contribution to biological understanding from previous genetic studies has thus been limited. We performed a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies across 1,222,882 individuals of European ance...

Background Alcohol use is a leading cause of disease. Although low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have lower per capita alcohol consumption, the alcohol-attributable disease burden is high in these settings with consumption increasing. LMICs are also experiencing unprecedented levels of internal migration, potentially increasing mental stress...

Background Major depressive disorder (MDD) contributes to a significant proportion of disease burden, disability, economic losses, and impact on need of treatment and health care in Brazil, but systematic information about its treatment coverage is scarce. This paper aims to estimate the gap in treatment coverage for MDD and identify key bottleneck...

Objetivo. Estimar la prevalencia nacional de conductas suicidas en población adolescente y adulta, por características sociodemográficas, con los datos de la Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición (Ensanut 2022). Material y métodos. A partir de la Ensanut 2022 se analizan preguntas similares en adolescentes y adultos relacionadas con pensamiento e...

Importance: Guided internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (i-CBT) is a low-cost way to address high unmet need for anxiety and depression treatment. Scalability could be increased if some patients were helped as much by self-guided i-CBT as guided i-CBT. Objective: To develop an individualized treatment rule using machine learning metho...

This study examined descriptions of suicidal thoughts and behavior (STB) to identify risk and protective factors that may present in clinical settings among university students from Latin America. Our focus was on answering the following key questions: How are suicidal thoughts and behavior described? What are reasons for wanting to die and for liv...

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the mental health of populations around the world, but few longitudinal studies of its impact on suicidal thoughts and behaviors have been published especially from low- and middle-income countries. Methods: This is a prospective cohort study of 1,385 first-year students from 5 Universities in Mexico...

We seek to evaluate whether Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) among university students in Mexico during their first year at university predicts a long list of mental disorders a year later, controlling for baseline mental health disorders as well as demographics. This is a prospective cohort study with a one-year follow-up period conducted during the...

Background and objectives: Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is associated with health, social, and academic problems but whether these are consequences of the disorder rather than precursors or correlates is unclear. We aimed to evaluate whether IGD in the 1st year of university predicts health, academic and social problems 1 year later, controlling...

Purpose Parental psychological control and autonomy support, abuse, and neglect influence adolescents’ mental health. Analyzing the direct and indirect associations between childrearing characteristics, maltreatment, and mental health is important, especially in understudied and diverse cultural contexts. First, we examine the associations of paren...

Background Research using the IPSCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool for Children (ICAST-C), has provided ample evidence of the magnitude of violence against children. Knowledge about its psychometric characteristics and validity is limited. Hence, our objective was to translate and culturally adapt the ICAST-C in adolescents from Mexico City and determ...

Objective: Given the increased legislative changes toward cannabis use around the globe and the negative consequences of cannabis misuse for public health and safety, a greater understanding of cannabis use transitions is important to guide decision-making. Although evidence on cannabis use-associated factors is vast, studies on the factors influe...

Background Research is scarce on the prospective predictors of first onset suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB) and the accuracy of these predictors in university students, particularly in low‐and‐middle income countries. Therefore, we assessed the 1‐year incidence of STB among first‐year students, a broad range of prospective predictors of STB in...

Purpose Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals, and LB women specifically, have an increased risk for psychiatric morbidity, theorized to result from stigma-based discrimination. To date, no study has investigated the mental health disparities between LGB and heterosexual AQ1individuals in a large cross-national population-based comparison. T...

The first year of college may carry especially high risk for onset of alcohol use disorders. We assessed the one-year incidence of alcohol use disorders (AUD) among incoming first-year students, predictors of AUD-incidence, prediction accuracy and population impact. A prospective cohort study of first-year college students (baseline: N = 5843; resp...

Background Potentially traumatic events (PTEs) are common and associated with detrimental outcomes over the life-course. Previous studies exploring the causes and consequences of PTE-exposure profiles are often from high-income settings and fail to explore the implications of sample selection (i.e., population-representative versus PTE-restricted)....

Aim Exposure to traumatic events (TEs) is associated with substance use disorders (SUDs). However, most studies focus on a single TE, and are limited to single countries, rather than across countries with variation in economic, social and cultural characteristics. We used cross-national data to examine associations of diverse TEs with SUD onset, an...

ABSTRACT Background: Impulsivity is a construct that is part of most theories of personality, and has been associated with psychiatric disorders, substance use and emotion regulation. Objective: To evaluate the psychometric properties of the short version of the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale in adulthood substance users. Method: Multi-site cross-...

Background Major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) are highly prevalent among university students and predict impaired college performance and later life role functioning. Yet most students do not receive treatment, especially in low-middle-income countries (LMICs). We aim to evaluate the effects of expanding treatmen...

Objective To examine the prevalence of ADHD and the association of comorbid disorders, and multivariate disorder classes with role impairment in college students. Method About 15,991 freshmen (24 colleges, 9 countries, WMH-ICS) (response rate = 45.6%) completed online WMH-CIDI-SC surveys for 6-month ADHD and six 12-month DSM-IV disorders. We exami...

Patient‐reported helpfulness of treatment is an important indicator of quality in patient‐centered care. We examined its pathways and predictors among respondents to household surveys who reported ever receiving treatment for major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, specific phobia, post‐traumatic stress disorder, bipolar diso...

Background: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) contributes to a significant proportion of disease burden, disability, economic losses, and impact on need of treatment and health care in Brazil, but systematic information about its treatment coverage is scarce. This paper aims to estimate the gap in treatment coverage for MDD and identify key bottlenec...

Purpose: To investigate the prevalence and predictors of perceived helpfulness of treatment in persons with a history of DSM-IV social anxiety disorder (SAD), using a worldwide population-based sample. Methods: The World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys is a coordinated series of community epidemiological surveys of non-institutio...

Introduction. Complex diagnostic profiles (i.e., clusters of comorbid disorders) may be present in adolescence with long-lasting effects later in life. Little is known about their developmental transitions to adulthood as well as potential risk factors. This study aimed to identify the diagnostic profiles in adolescence and emerging adulthood, patt...

Objective: to estimate structural and attitudinal reasons for premature discontinuation of mental health treatment, socio-demographic and clinical correlates of treatment dropout due to these reasons, and to test country differences from the overall effect across the region of the Americas. Methods: World Health Organization-World Mental Health (WM...

Background Mental health treatment is scarce and little resources are invested in reducing the wide treatment gap that exists in the Americas. The regional barriers are unknown. We describe the barriers for not seeking treatment among those with mental and substance use disorders from six (four low- and middle-income and two high-income) countries...

Importance: Individual-level social support protects against major depressive disorder (MDD) among adults exposed to trauma. Little is known about the consequences of community-level interventions in the general population. Objective: To determine the potential consequences of neighborhood social infrastructure on incident MDD in a high-risk gen...

Background: The mental disorders included in the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 were depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, conduct disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, eating disorders, idiopathic developmental intellectual disabili...

Aim We examined prevalence and factors associated with receiving perceived helpful alcohol use disorder (AUD) treatment, and persistence in help-seeking after earlier unhelpful treatment. Methods Data came from 27 community epidemiologic surveys of adults in 24 countries using the World Health Organization World Mental Health surveys (n = 93,843)....

BACKGROUND: Documentation of patterns and long-term trends in mortality in young people, which reflect huge changes in demographic and social determinants of adolescent health, enables identification of global investment priorities for this age group. We aimed to analyse data on the number of deaths, years of life lost, and mortality rates by sex a...

Background Documentation of patterns and long-term trends in mortality in young people, which reflect huge changes in demographic and social determinants of adolescent health, enables identification of global investment priorities for this age group. We aimed to analyse data on the number of deaths, years of life lost, and mortality rates by sex an...

Background : There is serious concern over the increase in mental health problems during the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. Methods : Based on data from two Mexican National Health and Nutrition Surveys conducted in 2018-2019 and 2020 (n=17,925 and 4,913, respectively), we estimated the prevalence of suicide attempts among adolescen...

Background The most common treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD) is antidepressant medication (ADM). Results are reported on frequency of ADM use, reasons for use, and perceived effectiveness of use in general population surveys across 20 countries. Methods Face-to-face interviews with community samples totaling n = 49 919 respondents in t...

Background: Most research linking type of traumatic events to the incidence of alcohol and drug use disorders among adolescents are cross-sectional and no longitudinal research exists in low/middle income countries where violence is common. Studies on bidirectional associations are infrequent. Methods: We estimated prospective associations of 7...

PurposeTo investigate the associations of childhood adversities (CAs) with lifetime onset and transitions across suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB) among incoming college students.Methods Web-based self-report surveys administered to 20,842 incoming college students from nine countries (response rate 45.6%) assessed lifetime suicidal ideation, p...

Objective Limited research exists on the impact of type and number of traumatic events on the incidence of suicide ideation and attempts (suicidality) among adolescents in low/middle income countries where violence is common. Method We estimated prospective associations of 7 types of events on the new occurrence of suicidality from a follow-up con...

Background: Treatment guidelines for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) are based on a relatively small number of randomized controlled trials and do not consider patient-centered perceptions of treatment helpfulness. We investigated the prevalence and predictors of patient-reported treatment helpfulness for DSM-5 GAD and its two main treatment pa...

Background Although non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is an issue of major concern to colleges worldwide, we lack detailed information about the epidemiology of NSSI among college students. The objectives of this study were to present the first cross-national data on the prevalence of NSSI and NSSI disorder among first-year college students and its a...

Suicide is a major public health problem in Mexico and around the world. Genetic predisposition for major depressive disorder (MDD) has been associated with increased risk for suicidal behaviors (SB) in populations of European ancestry (EA). Here, we examine whether MDD polygenic risk scores (MDD PRS), derived from a genome‐wide association study i...

Objective: To compare the occurrence of suicide attempts across nationally representative samples of the Mexican adolescent population over the past 12 years, and to analyze its association with sociodemographic, lifestyle and mental-health indicators. Methodology: Data were drawn from the 2006, 2012 and 2018 National Health and Nutrition Survey...

El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo central comparar los factores psicosociales en hombres homosexuales (HH) con y sin violencia de pareja (VP) en una muestra de pacientes de una clínica de atención del VIH en la Ciudad de México. Los resultados revelaron diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre los grupos tanto por sus características...

Introducción: La insuficiencia renal crónica (IRC) que se padece durante la adolescencia puede tener repercusiones que interfieren en lograr los hitos propios de esta etapa, como la adquisición de la autonomía, la formación de la imagen corporal y la integración con el grupo de pares. Objetivo: Entender, desde la perspectiva de los adolescentes, lo...

Background Although randomized trials show that social phobia treatments can be effective, it is unclear whether patients experience treatment as helpful in clinical practice. We investigated this issue by assessing perceived treatment helpfulness for specific phobia in a cross-national epidemiological survey. Methods Cross-sectional population-ba...

Purpose: Mental health disparities have been documented among sexual minority college students, but there is a dearth of evidence from developing countries. The aim is to estimate the prevalence of 12-month mental and substance use disorders across a range of sexual identities among first-year college students in Mexican universities, and test whe...

Most of the global population live in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), which have historically received a small fraction of global resources for mental health. The COVID-19 pandemic has spread rapidly in many of these countries. This Review examines the mental health implications of the COVID-19 pandemic in LMICs in four parts. First...

Objective Large-scale genome-wide association studies have uncovered genetic variants associated with depression; however, most of this work has been limited to adults of European ancestry. We investigated the ability of depression polygenic risk scores (PRS) to predict both lifetime and past year major depressive disorder (MDD) diagnosis and major...

Importance This study offers a rare opportunity to evaluate life-course differences in the likelihood of developing major depressive disorder (MDD) after exposure to georeferenced neighborhood-level violence during an armed conflict. Objective To examine age cohort (age <11 vs ≥11 years) differences in associations of neighborhood-level violence w...

Background Depressive and anxiety disorders are highly comorbid, which has been theorized to be due to an underlying internalizing vulnerability. We aimed to identify groups of participants with differing vulnerabilities by examining the course of internalizing psychopathology up to age 45. Methods We used data from 24158 participants (aged 45+) i...

Background Sexual minority college students are at a higher risk for suicidal thoughts and self-injurious behaviors compared to heterosexual students. Minority stress theory proposes sexual minority individuals experience higher stress due to stigma. Using a sample of Mexican college students, this study tested perceived life stress as a mediator o...

Background Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM-5) included in 2013 Internet gaming disorder (IGD) as a condition for further study, and in 2018, the World Health Organization included gaming disorder (GD) as a mental disorder in the International Classification of Disease ( ICD-11). We aim to compare disorders of gaming in b...

Aims To disaggregate associations with alcohol use disorder relative to those with early alcohol use stages in an adult population. We estimated prevalence rates and sociodemographic correlates for the opportunity to drink and transitions into lifetime alcohol use, regular use, and alcohol use disorder. Design A retrospective, cross‐sectional popu...

Introduction Impaired control over drinking has been frequently cited in diverse theoretical descriptions regarding harmful alcohol use and is considered a DSM criterion for alcohol use disorder. Differences in the frequency of endorsement of impaired control have been viewed as a reflection of the severity of the problem. Moreover, it has been pos...

Background: The epidemiological transition of non-communicable diseases replacing infectious diseases as the main contributors to disease burden has been well documented in global health literature. Less focus, however, has been given to the relationship between sociodemographic changes and injury. The aim of this study was to examine the associati...

Objective. Large-scale genome-wide association studies have uncovered genetic variants associated with depression; however, most of this work has been limited to adults of European ancestry. We investigate the ability of depression polygenic risk scores (PRS) to predict both lifetime and past year major depressive disorder (MDD) diagnosis and the e...

Background Past research in population health trends has shown that injuries form a substantial burden of population health loss. Regular updates to injury burden assessments are critical. We report Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2017 Study estimates on morbidity and mortality for all injuries. Methods We reviewed results for injuries from the GBD...