TY - JOUR TI - Mental health services and the well-being of maltreated children DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T30865C4 PY - 2010 AB - This dissertation investigated factors influencing maltreated children's accessibility to mental health services, based on Andersen's behavioral model. This study also examined whether these mental health services ultimately improved the well-being of maltreated children. Using the longitudinal national dataset, the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being (NSCAW), 1,559 children aged 5-14 years were selected for this study. Logistic and linear regression analyses were conducted using sampling weights. The results of the study indicated that children's age and gender, maltreatment type, placement type, caregiver's race, insurance coverage, and perceived need were significant predictors of mental health service use. Specifically, mental health service use increased with age, male gender, physical abuse, foster care placement, and Caucasian caregivers. With respect to insurance coverage, children with Medicaid received significantly more mental health care than did children without insurance coverage. Children with perceived need received more mental health care than did children with no perceived need. In regard to the effects of mental health services on child well-being, the results of this study found that mental health services did improve the well-being of maltreated children, but the amount of improvement was not as large as the amount of well-being improvement of the untreated children. In three developmental areas, children who had received mental health treatment at Wave 3 were less improved than children who had not received any mental health treatment. The findings from this study have implications for practice, policy, and future research on the well-being of maltreated children. This study suggests that further research is needed to examine why the mental health services in this study had muted effects in improving child well-being in the real-world and to help design effective intervention programs for maltreated children. The findings suggest that guidelines are needed to implement the most appropriate treatment for each child. KW - Social Work KW - Abused children--Mental health services LA - eng ER -