Story at a glance
- Ninety percent of adults in the U.S. think there is a mental health crisis.
- A new report ranks the states by prevalence of mental illness and access to mental health care.
- More than half of people experiencing mental illness aren’t getting treatment or care.
In a recent poll from CNN and Kaiser Family Foundation, 90 percent of adults said there’s a mental health crisis. A new report from the organization Mental Health America (MHA) ranks states by mental health access and metrics for prevalence of mental health issues.
According to the report, about 21 percent of adults experienced a mental health illness and about 4.8 percent report having serious thoughts of suicide. About 16 percent of youth experienced an MDE in the past year.
About 55 percent of more than 50 million people experiencing a mental illness received no treatment, according to the report, with the main reasons being access and cost.
Overall, states with highest prevalence of mental illness were in South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Kansas and Oregon. Lowest was in Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, New Jersey and North Carolina. Measures of mental illness included adults and youth with any mental illness, substance use disorder, serious thoughts of suicide and major depressive episodes.
States with greatest access to care included Vermont, Massachusetts, Illinois, Montana and the District of Columbia. Access to care was measured by access to insurance, access to treatment, quality and cost of insurance, access to special education, and mental health workforce availability.
The top states with the best mental health, or the combination of lowest prevalence of mental illness and greater access to mental health care, are:
- Wisconsin
- Pennsylvania
- Massachusetts
- Delaware
- Connecticut
- New Jersey
- District of Columbia
- New York
- Illinois
- Maryland
The states at the lower end of the ranking have higher prevalence rates and less access to care and include Kansas, Indiana, Texas, Oregon, Arizona, Idaho and Nevada.
The report states that for Kansas the largest change in overall score was due to a high percentage of youth with substance use disorder in the past year (90.5 percent). In another example, Wisconsin moved up in the ranking because a relatively low percentage of adults with a mental illness reported an unmet need (20.9 percent), suggesting many that wanted care could access it.
The report further breaks down adult and youth rankings by state.
“This year, again, the evidence is clear regarding the urgent crisis we face in American mental health. From high numbers of our youth who are contemplating suicide, to an increase in substance use, to widespread difficulty in accessing the care they seek, Americans are experiencing high rates of distress and frequent challenges in getting help,” said Schroeder Stribling, president and CEO of MHA in a press release.
The states with worst access to care included Kansas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Texas. “Our country has a known shortage of mental health providers – one provider for every 350 individuals – and barriers such as lack of insurance or insurance not covering enough of the cost of mental health care compound the lack of access for those needing help, with clear geographic and racial disparities,” says Maddy Reinert, who is senior director of population health at MHA, in the press release. “We cannot expect mental health to improve in the U.S. if individuals in need are unable to access the kinds of care that they want.”
One limitation to note is that data used to produce these rankings were collected through 2020, including the National Survey on Drug Use and Health data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. This is the most recent public data available. “The rankings are based on the percentages, or rates, for each state collected from the most recently available data,” according to MHA’s website.
Additional statistics and the full report are available on MHA’s website. Stribling says, “Everyone deserves access to the care they need and the opportunity to live a flourishing life of recovery.”
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