Health insurance and treatment of adolescents with co-occurring major depression and substance use disorders.

Objective: The goals of this study were to identify treatment rates among adolescents with co-occurring major depressive episode (MDE) and substance use disorder (SUD), and to examine the role of health insurance in the treatment of these disorders.

Method: Seven years of cross-sectional data (2004-2010) were pooled from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health to derive a nationally representative sample of 2,111 adolescents who had both a past-year MDE and SUD and whose insurance status was known. The associations of public and private insurance with MDE and SUD treatment were examined using multinomial logistic regressions that controlled for health status and sociodemographic variables.