New Hadassah study: a short Amharic questionnaire found distress in most patients — and nobody had asked them before

What the study did

On 31 March 2026 the Journal of Migration and Health published a study by Gladstone, Elinav, Cohen, Olshtain-Pops, Israel, Korem, Cherniak, Orenbuch-Harroch, Strahilevitz, Dienstag and Oster. It is an observational cross-sectional study run at the Hadassah AIDS Center in Jerusalem, in the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, between April 2021 and December 2022.

It assessed 90 Ethiopian-born patients — 46.9% of the clinic's population in that period. 66.6% were women, median age 49.5, an average of 17 years since diagnosis.

What it found

43% met criteria for depression or anxiety on the HADS questionnaire; a further 20.9% had borderline scores.
35.6% screened positive for psychopathology on the SRQ-F questionnaire.
60.87% in total suffered from — or were suspected of suffering from — depression, anxiety or psychopathology.

Risk factors that reached significance: unemployment; immigration during 2000–2009; prior psychiatric history; and a higher daily pill burden, a detectable viral load, and a lower CD4 count at diagnosis.

Why this matters to people the illness does not touch

Notice what actually happened here. Before the study, these patients had been attending the clinic for years — 17 on average — and distress in a clear majority of them was undocumented. It had not gone away. Nobody had asked, with instruments and in a language likely to get an answer.

It is the same picture the Knesset data shows: over-representation in psychiatric hospitalisation alongside under-representation in community rehabilitation. A system that does not ask in time meets people late.

What the researchers recommend

Their recommendations, as published:

Systematic depression and anxiety screening using validated questionnaires in Amharic.
Multidisciplinary teams including psychiatrists and Ethiopian cultural mediators.
Raising awareness — among patients and clinicians alike.
Exploring telepsychiatry as a way to bridge language and workforce gaps.
Integrating social services into the response.
That a detectable viral load should alert clinicians to the possibility of undiagnosed depression or anxiety.

What this means for you

Distress alongside a chronic illness is a clinical finding, not a weakness. The study shows it is common, and that it directly affects adherence to treatment.
You can ask to be asked in your own language. If the team does not offer, you can request an interpreter — we explain how in our language-access guide.
Numbers from one study are not a community rate. Ninety patients at a single Jerusalem clinic are not a sample of Ethiopian-Israelis, and the study makes no such claim. What it does show is what a clinic looks like once it starts asking.