Citation

Glied SA, Hoven CW, Garrett AB, Moore RE, Leaf PJ, Bird HR, Goodman S, Regier D, Alegria M. J. Child Fam. Stud. 1997; 6(2): 177-190.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1023/A:1025098607720

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Epidemiological studies of the prevalence of mental health disorders typically contain multiple measures of mental health, using different instruments and different informants (child, parent, and interviewer). We used the Methods for the Epidemiology of Child and Adolescents Mental Disorder (MECA) study of U.S. youth to assess the effects of employing a range of these measures in mental health services research. We examined the effect of including various measures of mental health status in regressions of income on mental health service use. The estimated effect of income on service use varied widely, depending on the measure of mental health status used. Some measures of mental health status have little explanatory power in service use regressions. Measures of mental health status based on parental assessment of impairment or need, such as the Columbia Impairment Scale, are less costly to collect and also have good explanatory power, but are more strongly correlated with income. The Non-Clinician Child Global Assessment Scale (NC-CGAS) performs best in terms of explanatory power and correlation with income. Higher income parents appeared to judge behaviors differently from lower income parents, so analyses based on measures derived from parental report may lead to an understatement of the effect of income on service use.