Effect of State Parity Laws on Children with Mental Health Care Needs

What is the impact of state mental health parity laws on children? While they acknowledged that prior studies have evaluated these laws, their study would differed due to its focus on children (rather than adults). In addition, prior multi-state studies looked at utilization and access and did not evaluate the impact of state parity laws on the economic burden of seeking mental health treatment. They examined how state parity laws affect out-of-pocket health care spending and other measures of the financial burden of treatment costs on families. The objective of this study was to inform the debate about the impact of mental health parity laws at both the state and federal levels.