{"doi":"10.1176/appi.ps.20240136","title":"High Out-of-Pocket Cost Burden of Mental Health Care for Adult Outpatients in the United States","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: This report describes characteristics of patients who had high out-of-pocket (OOP) spending on mental health care relative to income. METHODS: A sample of 8,923 U.S. adults with outpatient mental health visits was drawn from the 2018-2021 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Respondents who spent ≥10% of their disposable family incomes on OOP mental health visits were defined as having a high OOP cost burden. RESULTS: Using weighted percentages, the authors found that 2.4% of psychiatric outpatients had a high OOP burden; among those below the federal poverty level, 12.8% had a high OOP burden. Patients with a high (vs. low) OOP burden were statistically significantly more likely to be uninsured (7.5% vs. 2.4%) or diagnosed as having a substance use disorder (8.7% vs. 2.8%) or bipolar disorder (14.5% vs. 8.0%). CONCLUSIONS: Despite federal policies extending the availability of insurance for mental health care, many low-income psychiatric outpatients experience high OOP cost burden.","journal":"Psychiatric Services","year":2024,"id":439022,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":10,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.7805,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":262362,"name":"Mark Olfson","orcid":"0000-0002-3958-5662","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":826403,"name":"Y. Nina Gao","orcid":"0000-0003-4058-607X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":11,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:00:47.992543Z","pmid":"39257310","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}