Pediatric to adult mental health service use of young people leaving the foster care system.
OBJECTIVE
To assess and predict changes in mental health service use as older youth leave the foster care system.


METHODS
Participants were 325 19-year-olds participating in a longitudinal study of older youth leaving the foster care system in Missouri. All were in the foster care system at age 17. Participants were interviewed nine times between their 17th and 19th birthdays using the Service Assessment for Children and Adolescents and a history calendar to improve recall of service history. Analyses included Cox proportional hazards regression to predict time to service stoppage and McNemar's test to assess difference in rates of service use between age 17 and 19.


RESULTS
Mental health service use dropped dramatically across the study period for all services. Service rates dropped most steeply for youth who left the foster care system. Service use rates declined by roughly 60% from the month prior to leaving the foster care system to the month after leaving the system. Most young adults who stopped pharmacotherapy following discharge from foster care reported they did so of their own volition.


CONCLUSIONS
Practitioners should be aware of the possibility of patient-initiated mental health service discontinuation following exit from the foster care system and plan accordingly.
McMillen
J Curtis
JC
George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA. cmcmille@wustl.edu
Raghavan
Ramesh
R
D000293:Adolescent; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D005581:Foster Home Care / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D016015:Logistic Models; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000188:drug therapy; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010349:Patient Compliance; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000627:therapeutic use; D055815:Young Adult
D011619:Psychotropic Drugs