精神保健差异适用于黑人和拉丁裔儿童
在使用心理健康服务的差异,包括门诊护理和精神药物处方,持续为黑人和拉丁裔儿童持续存在,报告了卫生服务研究的新研究。
“Children’s mental illness is very predictive of poor outcomes later in life—socially, educationally, income-wise and employment-wise,” said lead author Benjamin Lê Cook, Ph.D., senior scientist at the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research at the Cambridge Health Alliance and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. “There is a real need to understand why there are these big differences in mental health care for kids.”
厨师和他的同事从2002 - 2003年和2006-2007医疗支出面板调查(MEPS)的全国代表性示例中查看了来自2002年以上的30,000青年年龄5到21岁的国家。他们分析了使用门诊心理保健,使用精神毒品和整体心理保健的数据。
“约有10%的白青年使用精神医疗保健,而使用精神保健的黑人和拉丁裔青年的4%至5%的百分比 -厨师说,2至1,白对 - 少数群体比例是巨大的差距,“厨师说。
研究人员还发现,在研究的两个时间段之间没有改变这种差异。此外,2002-2003和2006-2007之间的白人儿童花费的金钱增加,它可以大幅下降拉丁裔儿童。“即使是那些在关心的人中,它看起来像系统在拉丁裔用户相对于白用户上支出的美元量正在萎缩,”库克说。
Marc Atkins, Ph.D., from the Institute of Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago commented, “What’s difficult to tease out is how much of the lack of [minority children’s] access to care reflects the lack of availability of quality mental health care or lack of their family’s confidence that these services are going to be helpful. Some of that’s related to stigma about mental health care and some of that’s related to contentious relationships these families may have with social service systems.”
阿特金斯表示,研究表明,当社会服务系统使用策略来吸引这些家庭并努力克服耻辱和信任的障碍,获得精神卫生保健增加。
厨师评论说,有健康保险覆盖率是重要的预测因子之一精神健康护理用途。“这很清楚,如果我们让人们更好的保险并保险,那就有助于减少了很多差异,“ 他说。
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