The number and percent of children with an outpatient behavioral or emotional health visit will serve as an indicator of access to mental health care for children enrolled in hawk-i . Although there is no guideline or reference point regarding the percent of children that need mental health services, we can conclude that plans with a higher percent of children with a visit provide better access than those with a lower percent, unless there are differences in the prevalence of behavioral and emotional health problems between the populations in the different plans. In general, the plans within hawk-i seem to have comparable rates for mental health services (see Table 3).

Table 3. Number and percent of children enrolled for at least 11 months
with an outpatient mental health visit by age and gender

Boys of all ages with a mental health diagnosis are most likely to have been diagnosed with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (60% for boys age 0-12 years, 42% for boys age 13-18 years). The next most prevalent diagnoses were adjustment disorder and affective psychoses. These were equally likely in boys 13-18 years of age, while for boys 0-12 years of age a diagnosis of adjustment disorder was far more likely than one of affective psychosis. Girls from 0-12 years of age with a mental health diagnosis were most likely to be diagnosed with ADHD (26%). The second most prevalent diagnosis was adjustment reaction (30%). For girls 13-18 years of age, the most common diagnosis was adjustment reaction, while the second most common was affective psychosis. Table 4 shows the number and percent of children with the three most common diagnoses by age and gender.

Table 4. Number and percent of children diagnosed with the
three most common mental health diagnoses by gender and age