Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESRacial/Ethnic Differences in the Use of Psychotropic Medication in High-Risk Children and Adolescents
Section snippets
Participants
The POC study obtained data on a sample of youths ages 6 through 17 years who were selected from an unduplicated enumeration of children and adolescents served by five publicly funded sectors of care in San Diego County, California (i.e., mental health, alcohol/drug services, child welfare, juvenile justice, and special education services for youths classified as seriously emotionally disturbed) during the second half of fiscal year 1996–97. The sampling frame was stratified based on patterns
RESULTS
Table 1 displays predisposing and enabling characteristics of children by race/ethnicity. The majority of the children were male, with a mean age of 13.67 years (SD = 3.3). Mean household income (reported in thousands per year) was relatively low for the entire sample ($31,663/year). Sixty percent of caregivers reported that the index child had access to public health insurance, and 7.5% reported no insurance coverage. Over half the sample had been active to the mental health sector for the 6
DISCUSSION
This research focused on race/ethnicity differences in psychotropic medication use in children served in public sector service systems. The primary finding is that African-American and Latino youths had a reduced likelihood of using psychotropic medications compared with white children in regression analyses that controlled for age, gender, income, insurance status, involvement in the public mental health system at enumeration, need, and impairment. While several of these variables showed some
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The Patterns of Youth Mental Health Care in Public Service Systems Study was supported by NIMHgrant U01 MH55282 .