Health Services/Policy
The Impact of the Canada Child Benefit on Acute Mental Health Service Use Among Parents: An Interrupted Time Series Design Jasleen Arneja* Jasleen Arneja Brice Batomen Arijit Nandi
The Canada Child Benefit (CCB) is a means-tested tax credit implemented across Canada in 2016. The CCB is more generous than prior child tax benefits, is targeted towards low-and middle-income families, and has led to reductions in childhood poverty and food insecurity.
In the context of resource constraints (e.g., poverty and food insecurity), parents make trade-offs between food and other basic necessities, leading to stress, anxiety, and depression. Additional income received through the CCB may increase parents’ disposable income and reduce financial stress. It may also increase the flexible use of resources for the use of preventive care, allowing parents to address mental health concerns through visits to psychologists and physicians, and reducing their risk of acute mental health service use (AMHSU), including hospital and ED visits. We aim to examine the impact of the CCB on AMSHU use among parents using an interrupted time series (ITS) design.
We are using data from a retrospective cohort of adult Canadian Community Health Survey respondents from 2005-2019 with children <18y, followed from January 2010 to December 2019 using annual tax files and health administrative databases. The CCB was implemented in July 2016. AMHSU outcomes include hospitalizations and emergency department visits for anxiety-, mood-, and substance-related-disorders. The ITS impact model will allow for both slope and level changes. Count regression models accounting for overdispersion and auto-correlation will be used to calculate prevalence rate differences.
Ancillary analyses will use a controlled ITS design to compare changes in outcomes among parents vs. non-parents with similar sociodemographic characteristics, as well as in subgroups who receive a larger vs. smaller CCB benefit payment (i.e., parents of children aged 0-5 vs. 6-18 years).
The results of this study will guide evidence-based policies to improve health and reduce health disparities.