A second-year psychiatry resident with the Wayne State University School of Medicine recommended that economic stimulus funding be used to address mental illness disparities in the region during the 56th annual American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Conference.

Deepak Prabhakar, M.D., M.P.H., presented “Metro Detroit: Is There a Need to Bail Out the Mentally Ill?” at the conference, held recently in Honolulu, Hawaii. He noted that the correlation between socioeconomic status and the prevalence of mental illness is recognized in existing medical literature. The lower a person's socioeconomic status, the greater his or her chances are of developing mental illness. He examined the rates of mental illness in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.

“There is evidence of great socioeconomic disparity among the three counties. It is interesting to see how this disparity correlates with mental illness prevalence in our local community,” Dr. Prabhakar explained. “Wayne County has a higher overall mental illness prevalence as compared to Oakland and Macomb. Wayne County adolescents have a higher mental illness prevalence compared to Oakland and Macomb. Among Wayne County adolescents, minority groups have higher mental illness prevalence as compared to caucasians.

“There is a great disparity in the prevalence of mental illnesses across metropolitan Detroit and it correlates with the existing socioeconomic disparity,” he said. “Adolescents and minorities in particular have worse outcomes.”

Dr. Prabhakar recommended the use of age-appropriate and culturally congruent programs to alleviate disparities, adding that consideration should be given to using economic stimulus funds to address the situation.

“This has the potential of bringing much-needed relief to the adolescent patients of the metropolitan Detroit area and will also help in creating jobs that would eventually become self-sustaining with time.”

Dr. Prabhakar also recently submitted a chapter for a new book, “Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases IV,” published by the Society for Quality-of-Life Studies. His chapter is titled “Mental Health Indicator Parity: Integrating National, State, and Local Data.”

The writing grew out of his 2007-2008 stint as project director of the needs assessment component of Project Transform: A North Texas Mental Health Transformation Initiative. That work resulted in the publication of “Epidemiologic Profile: Assessment of Mental Health in Dallas County,” which led the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies to invite him to contribute the chapter.

“Health is a function of the interaction of an individual’s social, genetic and physical environment,” said Dr. Prabhakar, whose area of interest is health care disparities, in particular those among minorities and children and adolescents. “Disparities exist as a consequence of the inequitable distribution of commodities, resources and political capital in American society.”