A community survey of psychological impairment among Anglo- and Mexican Americans and its relationship to service utilization

Discussions of Mexican American mental health need have been limited to analyses of service utilization statistics, most of which have shown Mexican Americans to use mental health services proportionally less than other racial/ethnic groups. Consequently, Mexican Americans have been viewed as a group having greater unmet mental health needs. Yet, these utilization-based needs assessments make an implicit and untested assumption: that the proportion of the psychologically impaired is comparable across racial/ethnic groups. The purpose of the present investigation was, first, to contribute to a baseline measurement of psychological impairment among Mexican Americans in order to assess what utilization should be for this group and, second, to determine relationships between impairment symptomatology and sociodemographic characteristics which are unique to the Mexican American population. Anglo- and Mexican Americans (n=515) living in one of three suburban communities in Southern California were selected by way of a random-digit, multistage cluster telephone sampling procedure. Respondents gave responses to a standardized measurement of psychological impairment. Results showed that Anglo- and Mexican Americans did not differ in anxiety, psychosocial dysfunction, and depressive symptoms. Mexican Americans in the three communities, however, were found to use mental health services proportionally less than Anglos. Relationships between age and psychosocial dysfunction symptoms, and between income and anxiety problems were different for Mexican Americans than those for Anglos. Issues related to what constitutes mental health need and the use of self-report measures of impairment to estimate mental health need across culturally diverse groups are discussed.