Mental Health Disparities among LEP Individuals

ADVOCACY AREA

Advocacy Area

The selected advocacy issue is mental health disparities among Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals. Sources contend that LEP individuals face a higher burden of psychiatric illness than the general American population (Mirza et al., 2020; Garcia et al., 2018). Unfortunately, the rate at which they seek care for mental illness even when they have a probable diagnosis or are symptomatic is way lower than that of their counterparts with good English proficiency (Mirza et al., 2020). The rate at which US-born citizens seek mental health services stands at 40 percent, as compared to only 23 percent for immigrant Asian and Latinos with LEP (Ohtani et al., 2015).

The disparities are also evident within immigrant populations, with studies showing that good English proficiency increases the likelihood of using mental health services by approximately 19 percent (Mizra et al., 2020). LEP individuals within Latino and Asian immigrant populations were 55 percent less likely than their English proficient counterparts to attend community-based mental illness treatment programs (Ohtani et al., 2015). The findings of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), which surveyed the predominant immigrant groups’ language needs, showed that LEP Latinos had lower odds of receiving mental health services as compared to English-proficient Latinos (Odds Ratio =.19) (Ohtani et al., 2015). Only 42 percent of LEP Latino individuals and 32 percent of LEP Asians access mental health services at some point in their lives, as compared to 54 percent of English-speaking Latinos and 53 percent of Asians (Ohtani et al., 2015).

By 2017, the US had around 25 million LEP individuals, which poses a significant mental health burden, and threat to universal health coverage (Mizra et al., 2020). Sources attribute the disparities in the prevalence of psychiatric illnesses and access to mental health care to language barriers and cultural disconnects between LEP individuals and medical staff. Unfortunately, effective mental healthcare requires extensive and clear communication in a bid to build trust (Mizra et al., 2020).

Several policies have been put in place to address the linguistic and cultural challenges limiting LEP individuals’ access to health services in the US. These include the Civil Rights Act, the National CLAS Standards, the Affordable Care Act of 2010, and the Medicare Improvement Act (Proctor et al., 2018). However, there has been a general lack of commitment and political will to ensure that these are legally enforceable. Most of these policies set mandates, but do not provide the means to punish organizations or states that fail to abide. Much of the responsibility to address the challenges is left to individual organizations.