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Ethnic inequalities in the use of health services for common mental disorders in England

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether minority ethnic people were less likely to receive treatment for mental health problems than the white population were, controlling for symptom severity.

Method

We analysed data from 23,917 participants in the 1993, 2000 and 2007 National Psychiatric Morbidity Surveys. Survey response rates were 79, 69 and 57 %, respectively. The revised Clinical Interview Schedule was used to adjust for symptom severity.

Results

Black people were less likely to be taking antidepressants than their white counterparts were (Odds ratio 0.4; 95 % confidence interval 0.2–0.9) after controlling for symptom severity. After controlling for symptom severity and socioeconomic status, people from black (0.7; 0.5–0.97) and South Asian (0.5; 0.3–0.8) ethnic groups were less likely to have contacted a GP about their mental health in the last year.

Conclusions

Interventions to reduce these inequalities are needed to ensure that NHS health care is delivered fairly according to need to all ethnic groups.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mental Health Sciences (Bloomsbury Campus), UCL, 67-73 Riding House Street, 2nd Floor, Charles Bell House, London, W1W 7EJ, UK

    Claudia Cooper, Gill Livingston & Paul Bebbington

  2. Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, 22-28 Princess Rd West, Leicester, LE1 6TP, UK

    Nicola Spiers, Howard Meltzer & Terry Brugha

  3. Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Box P035, London, UK

    Rachel Jenkins

  4. National Centre for Social Research, London, UK

    Sally McManus

  5. Health Sciences Research Institute, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

    Scott Weich

Authors
  1. Claudia Cooper
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  2. Nicola Spiers
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  3. Gill Livingston
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  4. Rachel Jenkins
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  5. Howard Meltzer
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  6. Terry Brugha
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  7. Sally McManus
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  8. Scott Weich
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  9. Paul Bebbington
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudia Cooper.

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Cooper, C., Spiers, N., Livingston, G. et al. Ethnic inequalities in the use of health services for common mental disorders in England. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 48, 685–692 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-012-0565-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-012-0565-y

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