Child Mental Health and Mental Health Service Use

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The current mental health care system for children is fragmented, poorly coordinated, and is in crisis. Current knowledge of the system is therefore imperative. The purpose of this project is to examine the family, socio-economic (SES), clinical, and insurance correlates of mental health conditions and related services for children in the United States and to provide a baseline for tracking changes in the system over time. This project is motivated by the fact that little is known about mental health- related service use for children and how key factors, including insurance characteristics influence the use of those services, especially based on current national surveys. It is also motivated by the fact that changes in financing methods for health insurance coverage for children may have important implications for access and utilization of needed services for children with mental health conditions. Furthermore, little is known about how child mental health conditions and mental health services use impacts the family. In order to begin to address these gaps, I propose the project described in this application. The specific aims of this project are: - Characterize the population of children (< 21 years) in the United States that have mental health conditions with respect to family, socio-economic, clinical, and insurance coverage factors. - Estimate utilization and expenditure patterns and sources of payment for overall health care and care within specific categories of services by age, diagnostic, insurance coverage groups, and family characteristics. - To assess the impact of a child's mental health condition on maternal employment.