Racial matching and service utilization among seriously mentally ill consumers in the rural South

The authors examined racial matching between case manager and client for 677 seriously mentally ill consumers served through a rural community mental health center in the southeastern United States. Nonparametric statistics indicated that client-case manager dyads were more likely to be of the same race than of different races. Same-race dyads tended to have greater service utilization as indicated by a greater number of made appointments over the study period. An interaction was found for failed appointments where African Americans in same-race dyads were more likely to fail appointments, while caucasian consumers in same-race dyads were less likely to fail appointments.