Disparities in Mental Health
Mental illnesses have no bias. What I mean by this is that mental health conditions seem to affect social groups almost equally regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or social class. No one group is significantly affected more than another and when we look at the statistics every race seems to have the similar percentages of individuals affected by mental illnesses. However there do seem to be clear disparities in mental health treatment among social groups, predominantly race and social class.
In this blog post I will be focusing on the social groups that categorize the surrounding USC community, which tends to be race and social class. Minority groups tend to identify with both of these categories and in South Central the minority groups seem to be predominantly Blacks and Hispanics, most of which are low income. Research shows that blacks and Hispanics utilize mental health services at about half of the rate as Caucasians. This is a huge problem because mental health disorders that go untreated can develop further and get progressively worse as time goes on.
As I delved more into my research to try and discover some reasons as to why these disparities exist in treatment of mental health I learned of two major reasons as to way this problem exists. One is simply that people cannot afford such mental health services. This is somewhat of a paradoxical problem because on one hand mental health conditions can arise from too much stress, which is common in many low-income families who struggle to pay rent, bills, or even put food on the table. On the other hand, these individuals either cannot afford to take time off work to go to these services or just cannot afford to pay for these services. This seems to be an ongoing loop because their income seems to be affecting their mental health and also prevents them from seeking the help they need.
The other reason that explains these disparities is that there aren’t many mental health services in these areas and people are not aware of those that do exist. Not only is there a scarcity of health services but also the quality of these services tends to be a lot poorer in lower income neighborhoods. I have personally noticed the poor quality of health care in the surrounding USC community versus other areas such as Santa Monica. Once my mom had to wait 12 hours in an emergency room to get attended at California Hospital which is just a few minutes away from USC and the other time I decided to take her to the UCLA medical center in Santa Monica where the wait was only a little over an hour.
Many basic health insurance providers are now required to cover mental health service costs due to the Affordable Care Act, but there are many mental health clinics or service providers that do not accept certain insurances such as Medical, which is a major insurance plan among low-income individuals in the area. Overall I think a way we can combat the disparities that exist in the treatment of mental health disorders is by providing more services at lower costs in disadvantaged areas.
