Older adults have historically utilized mental health services at substantially low
rates. Unfortunately, though professional, policy, and other recent developments
portend an increase in service use, there has been scant empirical attention devoted to the
current or recent utilization of mental health treatment by the elderly, and almost nothing
is known about the correlates of mental health need and service use among older adults.
Accordingly, the present study examined patterns of serious mental illness (SMI),
specific mental health syndromes, and service use among older (65+) and younger (18-
64) adults throughout the United States, and the extent to which various factors predict
mental health need and the use and magnitude of mental health treatment. In addition,
the study examined factors related to unmet need, as well as age group differences in
perceived benefit from treatment. The findings reveal that older adults were three times
less likely than their younger counterparts to receive any outpatient mental health
treatment. Only 2.5% of older individuals utilized any outpatient mental health service
in the past year, versus 7.0% of younger adults. The results indicate that the low rate of
utilization by older adults may be partly a function of limited subjective mental health need. Prevalence estimates for SMI and all specific mental health syndromes, with the
exception of agoraphobia, were markedly lower in the older than the younger cohort.
Importantly, though mental health problems appear to be significantly undertreated in
older and younger age groups, the study also reveals that those older and younger adults
that make it into services typically benefit considerably from treatment. It is hoped that
the knowledge yielded by the current study will promote efforts to enhance mental
health care access and reduce the long neglected mental health needs of the nationâÂÂs
elderly population. Several factors related to mental health need and service use were
identified in the study that may assist policy, planning, and outreach efforts aimed at
increasing service access.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4374 |
| Date | 30 October 2006 |
| Creators | Karlin, Bradley Eric |
| Contributors | Duffy, Michael, Gleaves, David H. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | 335816 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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