Search Results

Data: A total of 34,030 individual/year observations on 3,786 women aged 18 and older were extracted from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 from October 1999 through November 2009.

Study Design: We modeled three binary outcome variables: any sexual activity; sexual activity with more than one partner; and any sex without a condom for women with multiple partners for women in states with state-level policy changes (prior to the 2006 FDA ruling) and for women in states subject to only the national policy change both jointly and separately.

Findings: We found different results when estimating the state and federal changes separately. The national change was associated with a reduction in the probability of sexual activity, a reduction in the likelihood of reporting multiple partnerships, and there was no relationship between the national policy change and unprotected sexual activity. There was no relationship between the probability of sexual activity or multiple partnerships for women in states with their own policy changes, but we did find that women in these states were more likely to report unprotected sex.

Objective. To test the role of social determinants-including race, education, income, and demographic factors-of child mental health services use, defined as having had a visit to a mental health professional for depression, attention-deficit, or for any reason.

Data Sources/Study Setting. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Child/Young Adult supplement, a nationally representative sample of 7-14-year-old children born to women who were 14-22 years old at the start of data collection, in 1979. African Americans and Latinos were over-sampled, and population weights are available to make nationally representative inferences.

Study Design. Indicators of mental health service use were regressed on social and economic determinants, family structure variables, and insurance variables, controlling for need as captured by several different symptom scales.

Principal Findings. Girls are much less likely to obtain needed treatment for externalizing behavior disorders than are boys, and are somewhat less likely to obtain needed treatment for depression than boys. Middle children are less likely to obtain needed treatment for any mental health problem than are oldest, youngest, or only children. The presence of the father inhibits the likelihood that the child will receive treatment, particularly for depression. African Americans and Latinos are less likely than white children to receive treatment. In contrast to these rich results for the social and demographic determinants of children's specialty mental health utilization, the economic and insurance variables (including maternal education and income) seem to hold little predictive power.

Conclusions. These results argue for interventions to sensitize parents-especially fathers-to the need to pay attention to the mental health needs of their children, in particular girls and middle children. The analysis also suggests that the literature on intrahousehold decision making and on the gender dimensions of investment in children is worth extending to mental health treatment decisions.