How Can New Hampshire be Available for Youth with Mental Illness?
Date
2024-04-23
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Southern New Hampshire University
Abstract
New Hampshire’s shortcomings surrounding availability for mental health services are explored in this analysis. Members of the DHHS called upon a further use of community mental health services to end the practice of ER boarding. Wait times for CMHC’s are investigated in order to explore the factors affecting CMHC’s and if they are able to take more capacity. Researchers hypothesized further expansion of CMHC’s is necessary as they are impacted by lack of availability. A data set was created by putting together New Hampshire census data and the 2021 New Hampshire needs assessment from the Department of Health and Human Services. Logistic regression models and decision trees were built to analyze associations between predictive variables and wait periods. Overall, only three counties in the entire state of New Hampshire were able to produce wait periods less than two weeks in length. Demographic information was not a significant predictor of the wait period. The available data was unable to be used to discover if specific age was a predictive factor for wait periods. Expansion of CMHC’s is needed because predominantly there is a lack of timely access to services across the entire state of New Hampshire.
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