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Some context: Experts say bad situations can often be reversed with treatment.
Both mental health and drug addiction crises have been affecting the country, and the effects of parental drug use and mental illness can quickly dripping down to your children. Public health experts say substance use disorders can disable a previously diligent parent and lead to the involvement of child protective services.
In 2021 alone, more than seven million children were referred to authorities for fear of abuse, according to a federal reportand more than 200,000 were driven from their homes. But research shows that when parents look for Treatment for psychiatric and substance use disorders.They are much less likely to experience family separation.
The numbers: what the researchers found.
To estimate treatment rates among parents receiving Medicaid, the low-income health insurance program, Tami Mark, a health economist at RTI, who led the investigation, and his colleagues relied on a new publicly available data set which used deidentified Social Security numbers to link child welfare records in Florida and Kentucky to corresponding 2020 Medicaid claims records.
For comparison, they also analyzed a random sample of Medicaid recipients who had no records in the child welfare system. (The study did not capture any counseling or medication administered outside of the Medicaid system, nor any cases of undiagnosed mental health or substance use disorders.)
Among 58,551 parents who had a child referred to welfare services, more than half had a psychiatric or substance use diagnosis, compared with 33 percent of the comparison group. About 38 percent of those referred with mental health disorders and 40 percent of those with substance use disorders had received counseling; About 67 percent of people with mental health disorders and 38 percent of those with substance use disorders had received medication.
Norma Coe, an associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research, said some of the rates were worse than overall Medicaid treatment figuressuggesting that some barriers could be specific to parents.
“Overall, the United States is less supportive of parents and caregivers than many other countries,” Dr. Coe said, “which has numerous long-lasting intergenerational effects on health and wealth.”
What happens next: Examine the barriers.
The study authors highlighted a number of barriers to receiving counseling and medication, including stigma, discomfort, and fear of losing parental rights.
They called for better coordination between social programs, such as integrating child welfare and Medicaid data systems to make it clear when parents need to be connected to specific services.
But Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor of family medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies inequity, said there was another challenge: a shortage of treatment providers who accept patients on Medicaid, which pays higher reimbursement rates. lower than private insurers.
“Access to behavioral health services is inadequate in the United States,” he said, “but it is even worse for Medicaid recipients.”
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