Employment outcomes among African Americans and Whites with mental illness

Abstract

BACKGROUND: People with mental illness often experience major difficulties in finding and maintaining sustainable employment. African Americans with mental illness have additional challenges to secure a job, as reflected in their significantly lower employment rates compared to Whites. OBJECTIVE: To examine the factors that contribute to racial disparities in employment outcomes for African-American and White Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) consumers with mental illness. METHODS: This study used VR data from a Midwestern state that included 2,122 African American and 4,284 White participants who reported mental illness in their VR records. Logistic regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: African Americans had significantly more closures after referral and were closed as non-rehabilitated more often than Whites. Logistic regressions indicated that African Americans are less likely to be employed compared to Whites. The regression also found differences by gender (females more likely to find jobs than males) and age (middle age consumers [36 to 50] were more likely to find jobs than younger consumers [18 to 35]). Case expenditures between $1,000 and $4,999 were significantly lower for African Americans. CONCLUSIONS: VR agencies need to remain vigilant of potential discrepancies in service delivery among consumers from various ethnic groups and work hard to assure as much equality as possible.

Fair-Wages for People With Disabilities: Barriers and Facilitators

“…For example, people who received the most daily support (24 hr a day) and mid-level support (6–12 hr) also had lower odds of having fair-wages than those who only received support as needed. This mirrors previous research findings about the relationship between severe impairments and poor employment outcomes (Lukyanova et al, 2014).…”

“…For example, people who received the most daily support (24 hr a day) and mid-level support (6-12 hr) also had lower odds of having fair-wages than those who only received support as needed. This mirrors previous research findings about the relationship between severe impairments and poor employment outcomes (Lukyanova et al, 2014). Our findings regarding individual-level factors that produce lower odds for fair-wages, especially those that relate to more support needs, may appear to be an obvious barrier to types of employment that result in fair-wages in the current US employment model.…”

Investigation of the Predictors of Self-rated Health of Economically Disadvantaged African American Men and Women: Evidence for Sponge Hypothesis

“…Health disparities across subpopulations with PDs may be attributed to the differences in gender, which may be overlooked by researchers and healthcare providers. 68 This study contributes to a literature that suggests how SRH is contextualized among vulnerable populations, such as aging AAs with PDs. A unique advantage of the current study was to analyze the health profile of low-income community-dwelling AA adults with PDs, which have not been studied extensively in the literature.…”

Rehabilitation and recovery for ethnic minority patients with severe mental illness

“…However, in practice in the USA, outside the confines of such trials, ethnic minority patients are often offered different services and face challenges accessing vocational rehabilitation services (Olney 2002). Lukyanova et al (2014), for example, found that ethnic minority individuals with mental illness engaging in vocational rehabilitation have poorer employment outcomes than White individuals.…”