Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #104983

Jungwee Park, PhD, Health Statistics Division, Statistics Canada, 3rd Floor RH Coats Building, Tunney's Pasture, Ottawa, ON K1A 0T6, Canada, 613-951-4598, jungwee.park@statcan.ca and Connie H. Nelson, PhD, Lakehead University, Department of Social Work, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, ON P7B5E1, Canada.

In this paper, we use data from the Canadian Community Health Survey Cycle 1.2 to examine the nature of unmet mental health needs in Ontario and how this is affected by sociodemographic, social support, health status and health behaviour. We hypothesized that unmet needs are not the same across different Ontario health regions, by the degree of social support, by some health behaviours and by health status.

The Canadian Community Health Survey (1.2) Mental Health and Well-being provides data on mental health conditions collected from approximately 37,000 people, fifteen years of age and older that are living in private dwellings in the ten provinces. The final Ontario sample size is 13,184.

Acceptability is the most frequent type of unmet need and within this category, the largest proportion of people reported experiencing unmet needs because they “preferred to manage the problem themselves”. There are differences in unmet need by geographic region. Compared to Toronto, most regions showed higher odds of reporting acceptability barrier (North, South West, Central South, Central West, and Central East) and accessibility barrier (South West, Central East, and East). There were no regional differences in reporting unmet mental health care needs due to service availability. There were also significant contributions from age, gender, income, some types of social support, health behaviours, and health status.

Learning Objectives: The participant will be able to

• recognize unmet mental health care needs in the general popultion
• apply understanding of unmet needs of mental health care to their own context
• develop a relevant plan for reducing unment mental health care needs

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.