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Mental Health Risk Factors, Unmet Needs and Provider Availability for Rural Children
Accurate measures of childhood vulnerability to mental health problems can help guide public policy that allocates resources for mental health care to specific populations, including funding and human resources allocated to rural community mental health centers. This study will add to the current knowledge of unmet mental health need for rural children, using data from the 2001 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The 2001 NHIS included, in addition to questions concerning diagnosed mental health problems, administration of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The SDQ detects subclinical mental health problems, including emotional problems, conduct problems, hyperactive behavior, peer relationship difficulties, and lack of prosocial behavior. This study will examine the prevalence of subclinical mental health problems in rural children, assess risk factors associated with problems in children, and assess the influence of local provider availability on healthcare provider contact.
Publications
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Mental Health Risk Factors, Unmet Needs, and Provider Availability for Rural Children
Author(s): Charity G. Moore, Michael Mink, Janice C. Probst, Mark Tompkins, Andy Johnson, Shereca Hughley
Date: 09 / 2005
The study used the 2001 National Health Interview Survey to assess the prevalence of sub-clinical mental health problems among children, the degree to which children with potential problems use mental health and general providers for these problems, and the degree of unmet need. Key findings include: 1) Nearly 1 of every 4 rural children has a potential mental health problem as derived from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ).; 2) Age, sex, family income, parental education, living situation, health insurance status, and previously diagnosed developmental disorder were all associated with sub-clinical mental health problems in children.; 3) Less than 1 out of 5 parents of rural or urban children with sub-clinical mental health problems had seen or talked to a mental health professional about the child in the past 12 months.; and 4) Characteristics associated with mental health care utilization were race/ethnicity, insurance status, level of education in the child's family, living situation, and previous diagnosis of a developmental disorder. Among roughly 2.9 million rural children with a potential mental health problem as defined by the SDQ score, two thirds (68.1%) are living in a HPSA-mental health designated area. This translates to over 1.9 million children with mental health problems but living in areas where very minimal to no resources are available for their care. Executive summary available online.
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Mental Health Risk Factors, Unmet Needs, and Provider Availability for Rural Children (Fact Sheet)
Date: 2005
Children in rural areas have fewer mental health resources available. To assess the need for services among rural children, they studied information from the 2001 National Health Interview Survey, a nationally representative survey of the U.S. population. Possible mental health problems were identified based on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ).
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