Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2026 Feb 25.
doi: 10.1007/s40596-026-02311-1. Online ahead of print.

Disparities in Mental Health Care: An Annotated Bibliography for Psychiatry Training Programs

Alyssa C Smith  1 , Danielle R Henderson  2 , Aimee E Patel  2 , Danielle K Patterson  2 , Rachel B Yoder  2 , Emily G Holmes  2
Affiliations

Disparities in Mental Health Care: An Annotated Bibliography for Psychiatry Training Programs

Alyssa C Smith et al. Acad Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Objective: Significant disparities in mental health care exist for patients from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, including decreased access, poorer quality of care received, diagnostic bias, and worse treatment outcomes. Education and awareness of such disparities is necessary to improve outcomes; psychiatry training programs should include education on these disparities for trainees, in line with ACGME Milestone Systems Based Practice 2 and 3, Professionalism 2, and Practice-Based Learning and Improvement 1 and 2. To improve integration of these topics into psychiatry residency training, the authors created this annotated bibliography of articles on disparities in mental health care.

Methods: The authors searched PubMed for articles relevant to disparities in mental health care. Two members of the author team read each article independently, evaluating for generalizability, ability to impact future practice, quality of study design, and relative ease of understanding the text and findings.

Results: The annotated bibliography contains a total of 35 articles recommended by the author team, divided into sections by topics (e.g., general psychiatry, outpatient psychiatry, inpatient psychiatry, subspeciality topics), arranged by date of publication.

Keywords: Annotated bibliography; Disparities; Mental health; Psychiatry.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Disclosures: On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

References

    1. Le Cook B, Manning W, Alegria M. Measuring disparities across the distribution of mental health care expenditures. J Ment Health Policy Econ. 2013;16(1):3–12. - PubMed - PMC
    1. Rost K, Hsieh YP, Xu S, Menachemi N, Young AS. Potential disparities in the management of schizophrenia in the United States. Psychiatr Serv. 2011;62(6):613–8. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Fadus MC, Ginsburg KR, Sobowale K, Halliday-Boykins CA, Bryant BE, Gray KM, et al. Unconscious bias and the diagnosis of disruptive behavior disorders and ADHD in African American and Hispanic youth. Acad Psychiatry. 2020;44(1):95–102. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Shao Z, Richie WD, Bailey RK. Racial and ethnic disparity in major depressive disorder. J Racial Ethn Health Disparities. 2016;3(4):692–705. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Psychiatry Milestones. 2020; Available from: https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pdfs/milestones/psychiatrymilestones.pdf . Accessed 2/6/2026.

LinkOut - more resources