Mental Health Patients in a Barrio Health Center

Abstract

U TILIZATION by Mexican Americans of Mental Facilities of a Barrio area neighborhood health center, and demographic and symptom characteristicts of this population were investigated. The findings suggest that contrary to other studies this program was able to reach a high risk Mexican American population frequently missed by mental health programs. The barrio location, the relationship to a neighborhood health clinic and a large proportion of Spanish speaking and local personnel, seemed to be factors in this result. The patients tended to be young adult women with marital problems, somatic complaints and depressive symptoms.

Significant under-utilization of mental health facilities by Mexican Americans has been reported in several studies (12,7). Since Mexican Americans are predo minantly in the lower socio-economic groups which have a greater incidence of psychopathology than higher socio-econimic groups (5, 8, 17), the explanation would not seem to be that Mexican Americans have fewer emotional problems. Rather, it would appear that Mexican Americans do not utilize available services and have psychological problems that go untreated. While there may be several other explanations for this under-utilization, this study attempted to demonstrate that in an appropriate helping facility, such as a mental health program integrated into a Barrio neighborhood health center, this under-utilization would not occur. In addition, the study examined the demographic and symptom characteristics of the Mexican American mental health population of the center, and compared these dimensions with those of outpatient mental health clinics dealing with more general populations. While there was no compelling reason to consider that the Mexican American population would be significantly different from other groups of similar socio-economic status, this comparison has not been as yet adequately assessed.

Data for comparison of the characteristics of our sample with persons receiving outpatient mental health services have been reported in several studies. Bahn, Chandler, and Eisenberg (1) have summarized characteristics for all outpatients in the State of Maryland; and, in a somewhat later paper, Rosen, Bahn and Kramer (14) presented the same data for the entire United States. Thus, national and state level characteristics of individuals receiving outpatient mental health services are available. In addition, characteristics of populations of certain local clinics have been compared with other geographically diverse clinics. In this connection, McKnight, Reznikoff, and Mulligan (10) compared demographic characteristics of patients in their outpatient clinic to that of the entire area of Hartford, Con necticut. Ginott and Lebow (4) have compared characteristics of a local northern region outpatient clinic with those of a local southern region clinic.