311 was used to identify respondents with depression and ICD-9 code 296 was excluded.

Anxiety was identified using ICD-9 code 300.

 Mental health treatment was defined in this study as psychotherapy or psychotropic

medications. Respondents who received psychotherapy were determined from the MEPS

HC office-based medical provider visit file and outpatient visit file. In the office-based

medical provider visit file, the best category for care that patient received was coded.

Respondents were considered to have undergone psychotherapy if the best category of

care was psychotherapy/mental health counseling. In the MEPS HC prescribed

medicines file, the presence of psychotropic medications were determined. If particular

anti-anxiety or anti-depressant drugs were coded under medication name (see Table A-2),

respondents were considered to be taking psychotropic medications for their mental

health condition.

Control Variables

 Because some populations are at higher risk for poor health outcomes than others

and thus, higher health care expenditures, we adjusted for these differences to compare

health outcomes among different patient populations (lezzoni, 2003). Patient

demographic variables (age, sex, and race) and socioeconomic factors (education and

income), obtained directly from pre-existing MEPS variables, were used to control for

differences in mortality and morbidity. With regards to age, older persons generally have

worse clinical outcomes than younger persons (lezzoni, 2003). Sex is an important

control variable because men and women face different risks for certain diseases. Among

men and women 65 years of age and older, men have higher death rates than women for

cardiac disease and chronic lower respiratory disease (Anderson, 2002). Furthermore,

life spans for women tend to be longer on average than for men. Racial disparities in