Ethnic Differences in Children’s Entry into Public Mental Health Care via Emergency Mental Health Services

For children and youth making a mental health crisis visit, we investigated ethnic disparities in whether the children and youth were currently in treatment or whether this crisis visit was an entry or reentry point into mental health treatment. We gathered Medicaid claims for mental health services provided to 20,110 public-sector clients ages 17 and younger and divided them into foster care and non-foster care subsamples. We then employed logistic regression to analyze our data with sociodemographic and clinical controls. Among children and youth who were not placed in foster care, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans were significantly less likely than Caucasians to have received mental health care during the three months preceding a crisis visit. Disparities among children and youth in foster care were not statistically significant. Ethnic minority children and youth were more likely than Caucasians to use emergency care as an entry or reentry point into the mental health treatment, thereby exhibiting a crisis-oriented pattern of care

Ethnic Differences in Children’s Entry into Public Mental Health Care via Emergency Mental Health Services

For children and youth making a mental health crisis visit, we investigated ethnic disparities in whether the children and youth were currently in treatment or whether this crisis visit was an entry or reentry point into mental health treatment. We gathered Medicaid claims for mental health services provided to 20,110 public-sector clients ages 17 and younger and divided them into foster care and non-foster care subsamples. We then employed logistic regression to analyze our data with sociodemographic and clinical controls. Among children and youth who were not placed in foster care, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans were significantly less likely than Caucasians to have received mental health care during the three months preceding a crisis visit. Disparities among children and youth in foster care were not statistically significant. Ethnic minority children and youth were more likely than Caucasians to use emergency care as an entry or reentry point into the mental health treatment, thereby exhibiting a crisis-oriented pattern of care

Effects on Outpatient and Emergency Mental Health Care of Strict Medicaid Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment Enforcement

We investigated enforcement of mental health benefits provided by California Medicaid’s Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment (EPSDT) program. Enforcement, compelled by a consumer-driven lawsuit, resulted in an almost 4-fold funding increase over a 5-year period

Racial/Ethnic Minority Children’s Use of Psychiatric Emergency Care in California’s Public Mental Health System

Objectives. We examined rates and intensity of crisis services use by race/ethnicity for 351174 children younger than 18 years who received specialty mental health care from California’s 57 county public mental health systems between July 1998 and June 2001

Limited English proficient Asian Americans: Threshold language policy and access to mental health treatment

The importance of providing timely, effective mental health services is increasingly recognized worldwide, and language barriers are a formidable obstacle to achieving this objective. Threshold language policy is one response implemented by California and other states within the U.S., in accordance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs receiving federal funding. This policy mandates language assistance services for Medicaid enrollees whose primary language is other than English once their population size reaches a designated level. Medicaid is the federal-state-funded health insurance program for specific classifications of low-income Americans. This study evaluated the impact of threshold language policy on Vietnamese, Cantonese, Hmong, and Cambodian limited English proficiency persons' use of public mental health services in California. Using random-effects regression on 247 observations, we regressed aggregate Vietnamese, Cantonese, Hmong, and Cambodian Medicaid mental health service penetration rates on an indicator of the threshold language policy's implementation, while controlling for a linear time trend and the effects of non-threshold language assistance programming. Immediately after implementation, threshold language policy requirements were associated with a penetration rate increase among this population. The penetration rate increase became greater after accounting for the impact of concurrent language assistance. However, this increase diminished over time. The findings indicate that, at least in the short run, language assistance measures requiring reasonable accommodations once populations of LEP persons reach a specified size have detectable effects on their mental health service use. These requirements increase the number of mental health consumers, but appear to provide declining benefit over time. California's threshold language policy provides one example of how public or national health systems worldwide may attempt to address the issue of equity of mental health service access for burgeoning immigrant/migrant populations with language assistance needs.California Asian Americans Limited English proficiency Mental health policy Language assistance programs Threshold language policy Access to mental health services

Use of Communication Technologies to Cost-Effectively Increase the Availability of Interpretation Services in Healthcare Settings

Limited English proficiency costs healthcare providers and payers through lower patient use of preventive care, misdiagnosis, increased testing, poor patient compliance, and increased hospital and emergency room admissions. Recently published literature and unpublished data documenting the use of telephonic and video interpretation methodologies to improve healthcare communication with the persons with limited English proficiency was reviewed. Utilization of the Internet provides access to translated documents, promising practices, step-by-step guides, planning tools, and research briefs. Such tools can add value to healthcare where language is a barrier