ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1559511
This article is part of the Research TopicInterdisciplinary Approaches to Enhancing Child and Adolescent Mental Health in SchoolsView all articles
Adolescent Mental Health Care and Support Adolescent Mental Health Utilization, Virtual Care, and Community Support: Evidence from 2019-2022
Provisionally accepted
- 1Walt Whitman High School, Bethesda, United States
- 2University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, Maryland, United States
- 3School of Public Health, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, United States
- 4Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States
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Objective: This study examined racial and ethnic disparities in mental health service use, social support, and telemedicine access among U.S. adolescents between 2019 and 2022. Methods: We analyzed nationally representative data from the 2019-2022 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Sample Child Interview, focusing on adolescents aged 12 to 17. Multivariate logistic regression models with survey weights were used to assess disparities in outcomes by race and ethnicity. Results: From 2019 to 2022, despite rising mental health needs, Black, Hispanic, and Asian adolescents were significantly less likely than White peers to take prescription medications (7-12 percentage points lower, p<0.001), receive therapy (4-12 percentage points lower, p<0.001), or receive both treatments (4-7 percentage points lower, p<0.001). Hispanic and Asian adolescents were also 9 and 15 percentage points less likely (p<0.001), respectively, to report receiving community support, while Black and Asian adolescents were 8 and 6 percentage points less likely (p<0.001), respectively, to have had a virtual healthcare appointment. Conclusions: Access to mental health services, virtual care, and community support remains disproportionately limited for racial and ethnic minority adolescents, even as overall mental health needs have worsened across all groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. The underuse of virtual care and community support among Hispanic and Asian adolescents underscores the urgent need for culturally responsive strategies to promote accessible and personalized mental health care for all adolescents.
Keywords: Adolescent, Mental Health Services, race and ethnicity, community support, Telemedicine, utilization, access to care
Received: 12 Jan 2025; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Franzini and Bustamante. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: William Zhou, Walt Whitman High School, Bethesda, United States
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