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For children and youth making a mental health crisis visit, we investigated ethnic disparities in whether the children and youth were currently in treatment or whether this crisis visit was an entry or reentry point into mental health treatment. We gathered Medicaid claims for mental health services provided to 20,110 public-sector clients ages 17 and younger and divided them into foster care and non-foster care subsamples. We then employed logistic regression to analyze our data with sociodemographic and clinical controls. Among children and youth who were not placed in foster care, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans were significantly less likely than Caucasians to have received mental health care during the three months preceding a crisis visit. Disparities among children and youth in foster care were not statistically significant. Ethnic minority children and youth were more likely than Caucasians to use emergency care as an entry or reentry point into the mental health treatment, thereby exhibiting a crisis-oriented pattern of care. Keywords Children * Race * Emergency * Crisis Mental health

Children and adolescents enrolled in county mental health systems, caregivers, and clinicians rated the enrollees' level of functional impairment. The enrollees felt they had less impairment than that believed by parents, while clinician ratings were a mix between functional impairment and externalizing/internalizing problems.

A review of the mental health histories of 448 children, 15-16 years of age who were admitted to a state-operated children's psychiatric inpatient services during 1982 was conducted. The review, which covers an 11-year period, shows that 33% were moved to the state-operated adult civil mental health system upon reaching the age of 18. The state-operated adult forensic mental health system provided mental health services to 13% of the cohort due to criminal law involvement, including 9% who received mental health services while inside state prisons.