Study finds mental health treatment disparity across races

The study found that mental health treatment among college students was based on their races. While half the American students received treatment, only one quarter of Asians and African Americans got medical care.

While gender and racial discrimination has been a topic of discussion since long, the basis of discrimination for treatment too has been studied previously. And in a new study, done after the 1990s, to examine mental health among college students of different races, conducted by a researcher from the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) has shown that there are significant disparities in treatment across different ethnicity.

The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that, in the last year, half of white students received treatment compared to just one fourth of African-Americans and Asian student. And just one-third of Latinx students among the students with significant mental health issues.

Lead author Sarah Lipson assistant professor of health law, policy & management at BUSPH, said in the study, "There is enormous unmet need for mental health services in college student populations writ large, and students of colour represent a disparities population based on even greater unmet mental health needs relative to white students."

For the study, the team collected data from 43,375 undergraduate and graduate students from 60 institutions that participated in a survey from 2012 to 2015. Out of all the students, 13,412 students self-identified themselves as African A merican, Latinx, Asian/Asian American, Arab/Arab American, or multiracial.

From the total participants, 42 per cent met the criteria for a mental health problem, with the numbers ranging between 40 per cent for African American students to 53 per cent for Arab/Arab American students.

Among African American students with a mental health problem, only 21 per cent reported to have received a diagnosis, compared to 48 per cent of their white peers. The team noted that the white students also had the highest frequency of treatment at 46 per cent. On the other hand, Asian/Asian American students were at 23 per cent, and international Asian students had an even lower frequency at 19 per cent.

The team went on to shown that the Asian/Asian-American students also had the lowest levels of need for treatment, with only 47 of those with mental health problem believing that they actually needed help.