Variation in mental illness and provision of public mental health services

AbstractBy providing affordable healthcare to many Americans for the first time, the Affordable Care Act increases demand for public mental health services. It is, however, unclear if states ’ provision standards for supply of mental health services will be able to accommodate this demand increase. Both the demand and supply of public mental health services vary within states; it is necessary to measure both locally. In this paper, we estimate the prevalence of mental illness within 3 0 geographical regions in the state of Virginia, a representative example of how many states organize their public mental health systems and how mental illness prevalence can be measured locally. Our methodology extends the analysis in Stern (Health Serv. Outcomes Res. Methods 14:109–155,2014) by covering an entire state and accounting for peoples ’ insurance status. The latter allows us to compare estimates of demand for public mental health services among those 30 geographical regions. We find that over 66,000 uninsured and Medicaid-insured individuals in Virginia are not provided with public mental health services. The deficit varies loc ally, with several regions having no deficit and others having 5000 or more untreated people. We also estimate that a large portion of the unserved people with mental illness are uninsured but would be insured for mental health services through Medicaid if Virginia were to accept the Medicaid expans ion associated with the Affordable Care Act. These res...
Source: Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology - Category: Statistics Source Type: research