The Referral of Minority Adolescents to Community Mental Health Centers

Few investigations have examined the referral of minority adolescents to community mental health clinics. This issue is especially critical in light of the increased attention given to mental health services for children and adolescents in recent years. The present study uses mental health clinic data from a large metropolitan area to explore whether African Americans and Mexican Americans entering mental health care do so through referrals that are more coercive than those made for Whites. The total sample consists of 2,460 adolescents aged 13-17; the results indicate that African-American adolescents are more likely than Whites to be referred by an external agency. When types of external agencies are considered, African Americans enter community mental health care more often than Whites through referrals from social agencies; Mexican Americans enter more often than Whites through school referrals. This paper suggests that African-American adolescents' overrepresentation in community mental health clinics may in part be due to their disproportionate contact with social and legal agencies and the propensity of these agencies to rely more often on the mental health system than on families or schools. Among all variables considered in the analyses for this paper, poverty status demonstrated the most consistent and powerful association with coercive referrals.