Forbes: Parents of color more hesitant to choose medication to treat child's anxiety disorder

Forbes recently highlighted University of Cincinnati research examining factors behind the decision to begin or decline medication treatment for childhood anxiety disorders after cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) did not lead to improvement.

Led by Jeffrey Mills, PhD, and Jeffrey Strawn, MD, the analysis of data of nearly 500 children and adolescents found only about 10% of patients that didn't get fully better with CBT elected to begin taking medication, even though medication and CBT are both proven evidence-based treatments. 

Patients from racial and ethnic minorities were three times less likely to begin medication treatment compared to white patients, and younger patients were also significantly less likely to begin medication.

“We were able to leverage more recently developed statistical methods to better model the relationship between medication uptake and patient characteristics,” said Mills, PhD, professor of economics in UC’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business. “This allowed us to identify which of these potential predictors were important in driving a patient’s decision of whether or not to begin medication treatment.” 

Read the Forbes article.

Read more about the research.

Featured photo at top of Strawn, left, and Mills, right reviewing data. Photo/University of Cincinnati.