Assessing Equity in Mental Health Outreach Services to People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness

Objective. The study aimed to evaluate differences in age, gender, race, and ethnicity between a population served by a street psychiatry team and the local community of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in order to identify intersectional inequities in care. Methods. We tested for bivariate associations between patient affiliation and age, gender, race, and ethnicity using a Welch two sample t-test for the continuous term (age) and Pearson's chi-squared test with Yates' continuity correction for the categorical terms (gender, race, and ethnicity). Results. The CMHC Street Psychiatry Team served a population (N = 200) that was significantly older (p<.001) and composed of proportionally fewer women (p = .010) and people of color (p<.001) than the local population experiencing unsheltered homelessness (N = 944). Conclusions. This process of critical evaluation identified disparities in service provision which prompted re-evaluation of services to target efforts to those most at risk of marginalization.