title: American parents' willingness to prescribe psychoactive drugs to children: a test of cultural mediators.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  In the USA, white children receive psychoactive drugs more often than black or Hispanic children. This study investigates whether cultural attitudes statistically mediate differences between American parents' self-identified racial-ethnic group membership and their willingness to medicate children for behavioral problems.
  
  
  METHODS
  Using data from telephone interviews with 1,145 parents in two Florida counties, structural models tested associations between each group compared with the other, in willingness to medicate children exhibiting different problematic behaviors and hypothesized cultural (familism, fatalism, attitude toward corporal punishment, religiosity, concern about treatment stigma, birth abroad, language of interview) and other mediators (views about medications and causes of children's problems). Respondent gender, age, socioeconomic status, parent-type household, taking psychoactive medication, and having a child with behavioral problems were used as covariates.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Race-ethnicity was strongly associated with specific cultural attitudes and views about medications and problems, but only Hispanics distinguished themselves significantly from whites in willingness to medicate children. Across groups, parents who viewed medication favorably and endorsed biomedical causes for problems were more willing to medicate. In Hispanic-white and Hispanic-black comparisons, being interviewed in Spanish was the sole but modest cultural mediator of willingness, and in black-white comparisons, only concern about treatment stigma weakly mediated differences in willingness.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings provide faint support for a parent-centered cultural explanation of reported prescription differences among youths of different racial-ethnic groups in the USA. However, structural and professional components of a broader cultural hypothesis for such differences, within the USA and between different countries, still require evaluation.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Work, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL, 33199, USA, david.cohen@fiu.edu.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: Frank R
authors.initials: FR
authors.lastname: Dillon
authors.forename: Hugh
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gladwin
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: De La Rosa
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D003469:Culture; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D005431:Florida; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D057545:Social Stigma; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology
chemical_list: D011619:Psychotropic Drugs