• Sungchul Park, Margarita Alegria, BustamanteArturo VargasAVDepartment of Health Policy and Management, Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA.UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, Los Angeles, USA., Jie Chen, Vicki Fung, and Alexander N Ortega.
• Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Health Science, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea. sungchul_park@korea.ac.kr.
• J Gen Intern Med. 2024 Dec 13.

BackgroundWhile studies have observed mental health inequities across aggregated Asian and Latine populations, a critical gap exists in our understanding of inequities within and across Asian and Latine subpopulations.ObjectiveWe examined the prevalence of mental health symptoms and variations in mental health service use across Black and White populations and Asian and Latine subpopulations at a more granular level.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study using data from the 2016-2021 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Outcomes included mental health symptoms (mild and serious) and mental health service use (outpatient mental health visits and psychotropic medication fills). The primary independent variable was the category of 13 racial/ethnic groups: Black and non-Latine White individuals and Asian (Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, and Other Asian) and Latine (Central/South American, Cuban, Dominican, Mexican, Other Latine, and Puerto Rican) subpopulation individuals.ResultsWe found modest differences in mental health symptoms by race/ethnicity. However, significant differences were observed in mental health service use among individuals with mental health symptoms. These differences were pronounced across Asian subpopulations with serious mental health symptoms. The likelihood of having any outpatient mental health visit was lower among Asian Indian (- 12.2 percentage points [95% CI - 18.2, - 6.2], Chinese (- 11.7 [- 21.6, - 1.7]), and Filipino individuals (- 16.1 [- 22.5, - 9.8]) than White individuals. The likelihood of having psychotropic medication fill was lower among Asian Indian (- 23.3 [- 34, - 12.7]), Chinese (- 19.8 [- 30.7, - 8.9]), Filipino (- 27.6 [- 40.2, - 14.9]), and other Asian individuals (- 22.5 [- 29.4, - 15.6]) than White individuals. On the other hand, some of these differences were observed in certain Latine subpopulations but not in others.ConclusionsThere is a heterogeneity in inequities in mental health service use among Asian and Latine subpopulation groups. These findings underscore the importance of studying granular categories of race/ethnicity for targeting mental health inequities.© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Society of General Internal Medicine.

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