Assessing mental health treatment receipt among Asian adults with limited English proficiency using an intersectional approach

Abstract

Abstract US Asian adults and people with limited English proficiency (LEP) confront mental health treatment receipt disparities. At the intersection of racial and language injustice, Asian adults with LEP may face even greater disparity, but studies have not assessed this through explicitly intersectional approaches. Using 2019 and 2020 National Survey of Drug Use and Health data, we computed disparities in mental health treatment among those with mental illness comparing: non-Hispanic (NH) Asian adults with LEP to NH White adults without LEP (joint disparity), NH Asian adults without LEP to NH White adults without LEP (referent race disparity), NH Asian adults with LEP to those without LEP (referent LEP disparity), and the joint disparity versus the sum of referent disparities (excess intersectional disparity). In age- and gender-adjusted analyses, excess intersectional disparity was 26.8% (95% CI, −29.8 to 83.4) of the joint disparity in 2019 and 63.0% (95% CI, 29.1-96.8) in 2020. The 2019 joint disparity was 1.37 (95% CI, 0.31-2.42) times that if the race-related disparity did not vary by LEP, and if LEP-related disparity did not vary by race; this figure was 2.70 (95% CI, 0.23-5.17) in 2020. These findings highlight the necessity of considering the intersection of race and LEP in addressing mental health treatment disparities. This article is part of a Special Collection on Mental Health.