
Mental Health in the United States
Mental Health care may be attained at myriad kinds of facilities: inpatient, outpatient, mental health treatment facilities, hospitals, and the solo clinician.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) is a unit within the federal department of Health and Human Services. It serves as the US government's central arm to treat mental health and substance abuse. One of its tools is to help those in need find a clinician or place to go.
If you are in need of help please use this tool to find treatment.
Before we may know where care is lacking we need to identify where care exists.
Sadly, we know that being near a clinic, or clinician, does not mean you will have speedy, or affordable access. Many barriers still remain in getting care to those that need it. The following sections focus on where the access is not and what are some of the characteristics of the people that live there.
Clinic Count
Looking at a bunch of dots from 30,000 feet is not particularly helpful. Instead, we are able to see how many facilities exist in each county. Some have none, others one, and yet more have significantly more.
Use the buttons below to highlight the number of mental health clinics across the country.
|
The map above, as the one before it, has its limitations. We see that 994 counties have no clinics. The challenge then, is determining how far a person in one of those counties needs to travel to reach care. A county with significant area might be sparsely populated making it look like a significant population does not have access to care when it really just means a significant amount of acreage doesn't. The population of that county might be relatively close to a clinic in a neighboring county.
We have two charts below that try to help solve this problem. On the left the columns represent the number of clinics per 100,000 people by area. A state like Virginia clearly has the edge here. While the line shows the average distance a person needs to drive to reach a clinic. The chart on the right just shows the clinic density described previously.
County Data Aggregated to the State for Distance to Clinic and Clinic Density by Population and Area
County Health Rankings
Physical well being has a lot to do with mental health. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation conducts annual rankings of community well being at the county level using myriad factors but our map illustrates the percentage of the population in poor to fair health.
Health Ranking Left | Clinic Count Right
HPSA [Health Professional Shortage Areas]
Values indicating hospitals, or clinics, that are in need of clinicians. The higher the score the more dire the situation. National median score is 16.
|
Deep Dive: Oklahoma
HSR.health's Care Desert analyses exist to not just locate areas lacking access to care but to also tell a story about the people that live in these communities. It is far too easy to just see a county, and not the people.
With the following swipes and 3D maps we are able to see a few of the demographics that make up the 77 counties in Oklahoma. For instance, this map lets you go back and forth between the number of mental health clinics and the percentage of each county's citizens, aged 16-74, that are functionally illiterate.
On the left is the same clinic count map you have seen already. But on the right, is map illustrating two variables: clinic count and illiteracy. The counties that have the most worrisome values are those in pale yellow. They have few, if any, clinics, and a high illiteracy rate.
Clinic Count: Left | Illiteracy Rate: Right
We saw before the deep dive in Oklahoma began the community health rankings for the entire country. Let's take a look at just Oklahoma and swipe back and forth with the clinic count map. What overlaps do you see?
Clinic Count: Left | Health Rankings: Right
For a slightly more interactive, and data rich, approach we use 3D to add analytical depth.
Use your mouse to move around Oklahoma in 3D. The main map illustrates both the number of clinics each county has within (color) and the average distance a citizen of that county must travel to reach a clinic (height). Some counties may be difficult to see so experiment with moving around.
Suicide & Access to Care
Myriad reasons exist as to why nearly 46,000 Americans died by suicide in 2020 but chief among them is access to care. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tracks deaths in the United States and suicide is the 12th leading cause. Privacy statutes require that counties with fewer than 10 incidences of suicide in a year will have no data. The maps on this page, and the charts that follow, highlight the 980 counties for which we have data.
Alarm Zone
The suicide rate and its relationship with the number of clinics in a county is not the only way to understand access to care. Key to all of our Care Desert analyses is how far people need to drive to reach a clinic, even if their county has one, or more clinics. Let's look at the suicide rate and the average distance a person would need to drive in their county.
Alarm Zone
What HSR.health Provides
HSR.health is an innovation-first healthcare technology firm and the leading provider of health-focused geospatial data analytics. Our AI-enabled, geospatial platform curates data globally and provides actionable health risk data analytics to healthcare industry professionals, NGO’s, and government entities.