Children's Mental Health: Black And Hispanic Children Less Likely To Get Help

Black and white children have similar rates of mental health problems, but black children are only half as likely to receive mental health care, results of a study revealed. Hispanic children had lesser rates of mental impairment, but they still received less mental health care compared to white children.

According to a report published in Pulse Headlines, the researchers looked into visits to psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and counseling for mental health care of children aged under 18 and young adults aged 18 to 34 years old. The data was taken from a nationwide survey in the United States in 2006 to 2012.

The report said that the lesser use of mental health care in black and Hispanics was found to be more pronounced in young adults than in children. For young adults, the researchers found that the rate of mental health treatment was about three times lower compared to young adults who are white. Pulse Headlines said that Hispanic parents are less inclined to report mental health issues in their children.

Perf Science reported that black children were found to have made 37 percent fewer visits to psychiatrists compared to their white counterparts while Hispanic children made 49 percent fewer visits. Statistics for visits to mental health professionals also revealed a disparity, with black and Hispanic children making 47 percent and 58 percent fewer visits respectively, the report added.

However, differences in income and insurance among the black, Hispanic and white children's families did not reportedly factor in the disparities in mental health care received by the children. Researchers discovered that young men who were black or Hispanic had markedly low mental health-related visits to medical professionals, the report added.

"The under-provision of mental health care for minority children contrasts starkly with the high frequency of punitive sanctions that their behaviors elicit," said the authors of the research, as per Science Daily. The research, led by Dr. Lyndonna Marrast, was published the International Journal of Health Services. Marrast presently teaches at the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine in New York.