Preventive Service Use Among People With and Without Serious Mental Illnesses

People with serious mental illnesses experience excess morbidity and premature mortality resulting from preventable conditions. The goal was to examine disparities in preventive care that might account for poor health outcomes.

In this retrospective cohort study, adults (N=803,276) served by Kaiser Permanente Northwest and federally qualified health centers/safety-net community health clinics were categorized into five groups: schizophrenia spectrum disorders, bipolar disorders/affective psychoses, anxiety disorders, nonpsychotic unipolar depression, and reference groups with no evidence of these specific mental illnesses. The primary outcome was overall preventive care-gap rate, the proportion of incomplete preventive services for which each patient was eligible in 2012-2013. Secondary analyses examined Kaiser Permanente Northwest data from 2002 to 2013. Data were analyzed in 2015.

Controlling for patient characteristics and health services use, Kaiser Permanente Northwest mean care-gap rates were significantly lower for bipolar disorders/affective psychoses (mean=18.6, p<0.001) and depression groups (mean=18.6, p<0.001) compared with the reference group. Schizophrenia (mean=19.4, p=0.236) and anxiety groups (mean=19.9, p=0.060) did not differ from the reference group (mean=20.3). In community health clinics, schizophrenia (mean=34.1, p<0.001), bipolar/affective psychosis (mean=35.7, p<0.001), anxiety (mean=38.5, p<0.001), and depression groups (mean=36.3, p<0.001) had significantly lower care-gap rates than those in the reference group (mean=40.0). Secondary analyses of diabetes and dyslipidemia screening trends in Kaiser Permanente Northwest showed diagnostic groups consistently had fewer care gaps than patients in the reference group.

In vastly different settings, individuals with serious mental illnesses received preventive services at equal or better rates than the general population.