Health Service Utilization Among Children and Adolescents with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Case-Control Study.
Pauline Goger, Argero A Zerr, V Robin Weersing and 8 others
PMID 34817448WHAT IT FOUND
Youth with PTSD used more health services than peers, including five times more psychotherapy.
Yet nearly one-third received no mental health care at all, and many relied on emergency visits instead of consistent outpatient support.
Key findings
01Youths diagnosed with PTSD were more than five times as likely to receive psychotherapy and five times as likely to receive inpatient mental health services compared to controls.
02Despite higher utilization, approximately one-third (36.86%) of youths with PTSD did not receive any outpatient mental health care, and nearly one-third (28.17%) received no mental health care of any kind.
03Youths with PTSD had significantly higher rates of psychotropic medication use, particularly SSRIs (30.79% vs 1.01%) and second-generation antipsychotics (16.96% vs 0.34%).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study relied on clinical diagnoses from medical records rather than standardized research assessments, which likely resulted in under-diagnosis of PTSD. Data was limited to youths within the health care system, so findings may not generalize to homeless, foster care, or refugee youth who have less consistent medical contact. The study could not assess the content or quality of the services received, only their presence and frequency. Service use outside the health care system, such as school-based or justice-system services, was not captured.
Declared interests
The authors declared no financial relationships or conflicts of interest relevant to this article.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that a youth with a PTSD diagnosis is receiving adequate evidence-based care. The data shows that nearly one-third of these youths received no mental health services at all, and those who did often received fewer sessions than typical for effective trauma treatment.