Symposia
Dissemination & Implementation Science
Allison N. Bair, Ph.D.
University of Denver
Denver, Colorado
Journey Simmons, PhD
Research Assistant
Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts
Emily Burns, M.A.
Doctoral Student (PsyD)
Graduate School Of Professional Psychology
Denver, Colorado
Samantha Scott, M.A.
PhD Candidate
University of Denver
Denver, Colorado
Kathryn R. Fox, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
University of Denver
Denver, CO
Background. Suicide risk among Black youth has increased sharply in the past two decades. In 2017, mental health professionals treated more than 160,000 Black adolescents who had attempted suicide (Price et al., 2019), reflecting a growing need for mental health crisis services for Black young adults (Cook et al., 2017). Unfortunately, racial disparities exist in the use of crisis services, with Black youth experiencing suicidal thoughts accessing crisis services at lower rates that White youth. Underutilization of mental health care among Blacks persists even when some of the identified barriers (e.g. inaccessibility, high cost, stigma) are addressed (Alang, 2019, Nestor et al., 2017). Barriers to crisis service use among Black Americans has not yet been examined. As such, there is an urgent need to better understand the factors that inhibit the use of crisis services among Blacks. The current project documents first-hand experiences with crisis services and recommendations for improvements in a sample of Black young adults with a history of suicidal thoughts.
Methods. One hundred and thirty-one Black participants (aged 18 – 30) with past experiences of suicidal thoughts and/or mental health crises, were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants who qualified completed a brief battery of measures, including open-ended items assessing barriers to crisis services, prior experiences with crisis services when relevant, and recommendations for improvement. For this project, we focus specifically on items assessing harmful experiences with crisis services and participant recommendations for improvement.
Results. Using open and axial coding methods, we identified 9 themes within open-ended responses to items assessing harmful experiences, as well as 13 themes across recommendations for how crisis services could be improved. The most commonly cited source of harm was poor treatment from providers (e.g. open hostility, lack of training and generic or depersonalized service), followed by concerns about the efficacy of the treatments offered, and concerns about the quality of the treatment conditions. The improvement most often recommended was improved attitude/training across providers (e.g. more caring/compassionate staff, more personalized treatment and better training), followed by reduction in mental health stigma and increased accessibility.
Conclusions. These findings highlight interpersonal mistreatment and disrespect as a barrier to accessing mental health crisis services among Black young adults.