Patients seeking treatment for depression who have lower income and education and those who are members of minority populations tend to have worse treatment outcomes even when receiving equal access to treatment, according to new research from the University of Cincinnati.
Led by Jeffrey Mills, PhD, and Jeffrey Strawn, MD, the UC cross-college collaborative research was recently published in the journal Psychiatric Services.
Strawn, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience in UC’s College of Medicine and a UC Health adolescent psychiatrist, said that previous research has concluded that people seeking treatment for depression with lower income and less education have worse outcomes because of a lack of access to quality health care, but it is hard to isolate socioeconomic factors as they are often intertwined.
