Can Mental Health Parity Help Address the Mental/Behavioral Gap in Child Health?

Abstract

Children and youth face major gaps in access to mental and behavioral health services. Rates of identification of mental health conditions in the pediatric population continue to lag well behind what we know about the prevalence of these conditions. In addition, most children and youth with identified disorders do not get adequate treatment. Conservative figures place prevalence of diagnosable mental health conditions as at least 20% of the pediatric population, rising with older age. Increasing stress on families also leads to more needs for prevention and mental health promotion. And the separation between mental and physical health ignores much evidence of the substantially higher rates of mental and behavioral health conditions among children and youth with physical health conditions (2–3 times the rates found among pediatric patients without physical health conditions).1,2 Some access problems reflect major limitations in the mental health workforce (far too few child psychiatrists, psychologists, developmental-behavioral pediatricians, and other mental health professionals). Workforce limitations in turn reflect the weak financial base for children’s mental health services, providing relatively few incentives for young people to enter the children’s mental … Address correspondence to James M. Perrin, MD, MassGeneral Hospital for Children, 125 Nashua St, #860, Boston, MA 02114. E-mail: jperrin{at}mgh.harvard.edu