American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health: Epidemiology, Clinical Characteristics, and Directions for Future Research

American Indians and Alaska Natives are incredibly diverse in terms of culture, tribal affiliations, and geographic dispersion. Unfortunately, they also share many commonalities including high rates of mental health conditions, remarkable health disparities, and difficulties accessing both care in general and evidence-based psychological treatments. Improving outcomes for Indigenous communities requires understanding the myriad of social inequities that increase risk for mental and physical health problems, tailoring and disseminating population-based models of mental health care to maximize efficiency of limited resources, and training a new culturally competent workforce.