Report: Most Americans With Mental Health Needs Don’t Get Treatment

Even with health insurance, approximately two thirds of Americans with a diagnosed mental health condition were unable to access care in 2021, according to a new report by the actuary firm Milliman. In addition, NPR reports, only “one third of insured people who visited an emergency department or hospital during a mental health crisis, received follow-up care within a month of being discharged.”

Inseparable, the mental health advocacy group who commissioned the report, also put out an accompanying brief offering policy solutions to address current mental health care gaps.

“We kept hearing nightmare stories about Americans not getting the treatment that they needed because insurance companies were denying them care,” says Bill Smith, founder of Inseparable. “But we didn’t have enough data to show just how extensive and deep the problem was.”

“The data confirm what so many families and our friends know, which is that mental health access is a problem,” says psychologist Benjamin Miller, one of the authors of the policy solutions brief that accompanied the report. “It’s very clear that there are people who have identifiable conditions, who are not able to find providers to help them.”

The report highlights many barriers to access:

Lack of providers

There are simply not enough mental health professionals to meet the demand, particularly in certain parts of the country. According to the report, “half of the U.S. population lives in areas designated as Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas, and that the country has less than a third of the psychiatrists needed to meet those provider shortages.”

Cost

Cost is a significant barrier. The report finds that “the average out-of-pocket cost for an hour-long psychotherapy session in 2021 was $174,” which is prohibitive to many people.

“Ghost” networks of providers

Many insurance companies have provider networks for mental health care that are inadequate or completely out of date.

“The problem with these in-network directories is that when you begin to call around and you begin to ask people, ‘Can you see me? Are you accepting new patients?’ The answer to a lot of them is no, they’re not accepting new patients,” says Miller. “Some provider directories are old enough that you might even have people on there that are not practicing anymore.”

Read the NPR article here.

Read the report in its entirety.

Read Inseparable’s proposed policy changes to address the issues raised in the report.

 

Chatterjee, Rhitu. “Most Americans with mental health needs don’t get treatment, report finds.” NPR.org, 13 Dec 2023, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/12/13/1218953789/most-americans-with-mental-health-needs-dont-get-treatment-report-finds

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash