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Published on: March 15, 2024
Rising Mental Health Incidence Among Adolescents in Westchester, NY
A Ravishankar Rao1, Saroja Rao2, Rosy Chhabra3
1Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ, USA. raviraodr@gmail.com.
Context:
Many governments have publicly released healthcare data, which can be mined for insights about disease conditions, and their impact on society.
Methods:
We present a big-data analytics approach to investigate data in the New York Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) consisting of 20 million patient records.
Findings:
Whereas the age group 30-48 years exhibited an 18% decline in mental health (MH) disorders from 2009 to 2016, the age group 0-17 years showed a 5.4% increase. MH issues amongst the age group 0-17 years comprise a significant expenditure in New York State. Within this age group, we find a higher prevalence of MH disorders in females and minority populations. Westchester County has seen a 32% increase in incidences and a 41% increase in costs.
Conclusions:
Our approach is scalable to data from multiple government agencies and provides an independent perspective on health care issues, which can prove valuable to policy and decision-makers.
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