Bree Gonzalez and Hannah Zelms, “Parents’ Perceptions of Barriers to Children’s Mental Health Services”
Mentors: Paul Florsheim, Stephani Moravec, and Marin Schmitt, Public Health

Barriers to mental health treatment have been well documented in the research and clinical literature. The most commonly researched barriers are (a) the stigma associated with seeking mental health services and (b) the structural/economic obstacles that make accessing services difficult, but other common barriers include: (c) not recognizing mental health problems as warranting treatment and (d) lack of trust in the mental health treatment system. Less is known about how these four barriers affect the beliefs and behaviors of parents in varying socially and economically advantaged neighborhoods. This presentation will focus on the results of a pilot study designed to collect data from parents around perceived barriers to children’s mental health in distinct community settings using a vignette-based survey. The vignette-based survey allowed us to ask parents about their beliefs regarding mental health services without presuming they had a child with mental health needs. We recruited through urban and suburban libraries to compare the perspectives of parents in high- and low-income neighborhoods. One-hundred ten parent participants were recruited from three public libraries in disadvantaged, primarily African American neighborhoods and four public libraries in well-to-do, primarily white neighborhoods. Thirty-two identified as white and 71 identified as African American. Thirty-five indicated they had previous experience with the mental health system. Factor analyses were done to confirm the hypothesized barrier types. Comparisons were made to test the association between race, neighborhood, and personal experience with the mental health system and barriers. Preliminary results indicated that whites reported more stigma barriers and African Americans reported more trust barriers. People in disadvantaged neighborhoods and people with previous mental health treatment experience reported more structural barriers. We discuss the implications for these findings for systemic change to increase access.