Mental Health America released a new report today. It's entitled Parity or Disparity: The State of Mental Health in America, 2015. The report offers the first cumulative ranking of mental health status and access to services for all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
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| Source: Data from www.mhascreening.org |
The report includes measures of mental health status and access for adults and children, drawn from national databases that are regularly updated. Altogether, they paint a very interesting picture of how states measure up to one another in protecting the mental health of their people.
The best states for your mental health? Massachusetts leads the list, followed by Vermont, Maine, North Dakota, and Delaware. Rounding out the top ten are Minnesota, Maryland, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
There are traditionally liberal and traditionally conservative states in the top ten, so what does that tell us? Two things at least. First, neither party has a monopoly on mental health policy, and so political compromise and consensus are more than possible when everyone works together. Second, treating investments in mental health as a priority matters.
How about the bottom ten?
Idaho, Arkansas, Montana, Oklahoma, and New Mexico are in the next-to-last group of five. And the bottom five are Louisiana, Washington, Nevada, Mississippi, and - last of all - Arizona. As it turns out, no single region dominates the bottom ten. And there's room for improvement most anywhere.
What's the best way to reduce the disparities among the states? A concerted effort to invest in early identification and intervention would be a start.
Why are mental health conditions the only chronic conditions we wait until Stage 4 to treat, and then often only through incarceration? By that late stage, treatment is expensive and recovery is difficult to achieve - just as it is with Stage 4 cancer or Stage 4 heart disease.
When half of mental illnesses manifest by age fourteen, why do we wait ten years - until the diseases have robbed people of schooling and jobs, broken apart families, cost people insurance and housing - before we step in?
The problem is that too many policy makers are trapped in Stage 4 thinking. They wait too long for crises to occur, and then respond inadequately when they do.
We could change this way of thinking, and change the trajectories of people's lives. And - whether you think your state should have been ranked higher or lower - this report can help us do this.
To read the full report, click here.
For more information, email me at pgionfriddo@mentalhealthamerica.net.
