ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the socio-economic and diagnostic characteristics of individuals whose usual source of care is a private practitioner, a pre-paid health-care plan, a clinic or an episodic care centre. It examines the relationship between usual source of medical care and the likelihood and frequency of use of ambulatory mental health specialty services. The chapter also provides information on people who report no usual source of health care, or who receive care only from small or unusual sources which are less likely to be included in organizational studies. It considers only respondents living in independent households. With respect to gender, males predominate in two groups – emergency-room users and persons with no usual source of health care - whereas females predominate among persons using private medical practice and out-patient clinics. When psychiatric disorders are divided into substance-abuse disorders and all other types, differing distributions are found.
