For people with Serious Mental Illness (SMI), attendance to behavioral health care services is linked to a an increased probability of recovery and a decreased risk for suicide, involuntary hospitalization, incarceration, mental distress, and preventable mortality. Within the population of people with SMI, women and men who are Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPoC) are most likely to experience barriers to services and are the least likely groups to attend services. Thus, most studies examining behavioral health care attendance trends for people with SMI focus on the relationship between marginalized race and/or sex and barriers to service attendance. However, few studies examine the relationship between barriers and attendance among those who occupy multiple marginalized identity groups. This study seeks to fill that gap. Using Multiple Jeopardy theory, which asserts that membership in multiple marginalized groups increases the risk of experiencing negative life events, this study examines the impact of holding multiple marginalized social group identities and of experiencing barriers to attendance on the probability of attending behavioral health services among people with SMI.
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