Data on Mental Health Diseases and Conditions Reported by Researchers at Augusta University (Impact of Mental Health Insurance Legislation On Mental Health Treatment In a Longitudinal Sample of Adolescents): Mental Health Diseases and Conditions

2021 OCT 12 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Investigators discuss new findings in Mental Health Diseases and Conditions. According to news reporting out of Augusta, Georgia, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Mental health insurance laws are intended to improve access to needed treatments and prevent discrimination in coverage for mental health conditions and other medical conditions. The aim was to estimate the impact of these policies on mental health treatment utilization in a nationally representative longitudinal sample of youth followed through adulthood.”

Financial support for this research came from US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Field Initiated Research Program.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Augusta University, “We used data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Mental Health Insurance Laws data set. We specified a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model to estimate the relationship between mental health treatment utilization and law exposure while controlling for other explanatory variables. We found that the number of mental health treatment visits declined as cumulative exposure to mental health insurance legislation increased; a 10 unit (or 10.3%) increase in the law exposure strength resulted in a 4% decline in the number of mental health visits. We also found that state mental health insurance laws are associated with reducing mental health treatments and disparities within at-risk subgroups. Prolonged exposure to comprehensive mental health laws across a person’s childhood and adolescence may reduce the demand for mental health visitations in adulthood, hence, reducing the burden on the payors and consumers.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Further, as the exposure to the mental health law strengthened, the gap between at-risk subgroups was narrowed or eliminated at the highest policy exposure levels.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Impact of Mental Health Insurance Legislation On Mental Health Treatment In a Longitudinal Sample of Adolescents. Medical Care, 2021;59(10):939-946. Medical Care can be contacted at: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Two Commerce Sq, 2001 Market St, Philadelphia, PA 19103, USA. (Lippincott Williams and Wilkins - www.lww.com; Medical Care - http://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/pages/default.aspx)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Vahe Heboyan, Augusta University, Medical College of Georgia, Dept. of Population Health Sciences, Hlth Econ & Modeling Div, Augusta, GA, United States. Additional authors for this research include Megan D. Douglas, Brian McGregor and Teal W. Benevides.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1097/MLR.0000000000001619. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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