How Racial and Socioeconomic Factors Impact Mental Health Care

February 27, 2017

The following is an excerpt from a news article on NJTVOnline.org.

A groundbreaking study on children and mental health on who gets treatment and who doesn’t, why and what impact it has on a child’s development and adulthood. It’s a Rutgers-Camden study to be published in May in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. The study’s author, Assistant Professor Wenhua Lu, joins NJTV News Correspondent Michael Hill to talk about her findings.

Hill: You conclude mental health treatment and counseling services are disproportionately received according to racial and socioeconomic factors. How did you reach that conclusion?

Lu: Yes. For that study I looked at the national survey of children’s studies. It’s national data and we can actually take surveys from parents across the United States. Based on children’s self reports, there are like 15 percent of children who suffer from mental health problems but they didn’t receive appropriate health care. There are enormous disparities with respect to race and socioeconomic status. For example, compared with white Hispanic and black children are less likely to receive the mental health care that they need. And also compared with children who are either publicly insured or privately insured, those kids who don’t have the insurance are less likely to receive the mental health care that they need.

Hill: Why is that? What is there the disparity?

Lu: This is a great question. There are a lost of reasons or risk factors that may lead to these disparities. For example, at the child level, so let’s say like the whole child and adolescent population in general, at the children’s level there’s children and adolescents who have mental health problems. They may have self-induced stigma, or they may have a mistrust to the mental health professionals. And at the parent level, they may also have a stigma and they may also not have enough community support. At the community level, there’s children and adolescents’ families, especially those living in socioeconomic disadvantaged communities, they may have a lack of access to those appropriate health services. At the policy level, for example for children who are publicly insured, like those families who are served by receiving Medicaid, there are opportunities for serving them to receive such health care, but they are not aware of this. So others can contribute to children’s mental health service needs, and also with respect to racial ethnic minority children specifically. Among these groups they may also have cultural mistrust for health care professions, especially in the U.S.

Read the full article on NJTVOnline.org.