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Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health
Published in: Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 4/2011

Open Access 01-08-2011 | Original Paper

Estimating the Effects of Immigration Status on Mental Health Care Utilizations in the United States

Authors: Jie Chen, Arturo Vargas-Bustamante

Published in: Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health | Issue 4/2011

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Abstract

Immigration status is a likely deterrent of mental health care utilization in the United States. Using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and National Health Interview survey from 2002 to 2006, multivariable logistic regressions were used to estimate the effects of immigration status on mental health care utilization among patients with depression or anxiety disorders. Multivariate regressions showed that immigrants were significantly less likely to take any prescription drugs, but not significantly less likely to have any physician visits compared to US-born citizens. Results also showed that improving immigrants’ health care access and health insurance coverage could potentially reduce disparities between US-born citizens and immigrants by 14–29% and 9–28% respectively. Policy makers should focus on expanding the availability of regular sources of health care and immigrant health coverage to reduce disparities on mental health care utilization. Targeted interventions should also focus on addressing immigrants’ language barriers, and providing culturally appropriate services.
Footnotes
1
Following Fairlie [45], the decomposition for a nonlinear equation, \( Y = F(X\hat{\beta }) \), could be written as:
\( \bar{Y}^{B} - \bar{Y}^{N} = \left[ {\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{{N^{B} }} {{\frac{{F(X_{i}^{B} \hat{\beta }^{B} )}}{{N^{B} }}}} - \sum\limits_{i = 1}^{{N^{N} }} {{\frac{{F(X_{i}^{N} \hat{\beta }^{B} )}}{{N^{N} }}}} } \right] + \left[ {\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{{N^{N} }} {{\frac{{F(X_{i}^{N} \hat{\beta }^{B} )}}{{N^{N} }}}} - \sum\limits_{i = 1}^{{N^{N} }} {{\frac{{F(X_{i}^{B} \hat{\beta }^{N} )}}{{N^{N} }}}} } \right] \)where B stands for US-born citizens and N stands for non-Citizens. The first term on the right-hand-side measures the portion of the difference due to observed population characteristics, and the second term measures the portion of the difference due to unobserved heterogeneities.
 
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Metadata
Title
Estimating the Effects of Immigration Status on Mental Health Care Utilizations in the United States
Authors
Jie Chen
Arturo Vargas-Bustamante
Publication date
01-08-2011
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health / Issue 4/2011
Print ISSN: 1557-1912
Electronic ISSN: 1557-1920
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-011-9445-x

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