Mental Health Providers
About
Ratio of population to mental health providers. The 2025 Annual Data Release used data from 2024 for this measure.
For most states and counties, updated data were released on using data from 2025.
Access to health care requires not only financial coverage but also access to providers. More than 122 million people lived in a Mental Health Professional Shortage Area as of December 2024.1 While the mental health parity aspects of the Affordable Care Act create increased coverage for mental health services, concerns such as difficulties in finding in-network providers and differences in the amount of cost-sharing between primary care and mental health care add to the issue of the mental health provider shortages, preventing many people from receiving care.2
Data and methods
Data Source
CMS, National Provider Identifier Downloadable File
The National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) downloadable file contains all active and inactive National Provider Identifier (NPI) records. The file is also known as the NPI Downloadable File and/or the full replacement Monthly NPI File and is updated monthly. For active NPIs, data such as the provider's name, specialty and practice address are published in the downloadable file. Data in the file is reported to NPPES by providers when applying for an NPI or updating information associated with their NPI.
Website to download data
For more detailed methodological information
Key Measure Methods
Mental Health Providers is a ratio
Mental Health Providers is the ratio of the population to mental health providers. The ratio represents the number of individuals served by one mental health provider in a county, if providers were equally distributed across the population. For example, if a county has a population of 50,000 and has 20 mental health providers, the county ratio would be: 2,500:1. The value on the right side of the ratio is always 1 or 0; 1 indicates that there is at least one mental health provider in the county, and zero indicates there are no registered mental health providers in the county.
The method for calculating Mental Health Providers has changed
With the 2015 Annual Data Release, marriage and family therapists and mental health providers that treat alcohol and drug abuse were included in this measure.
With our most recent update (09/24/2025), we applied geospatial tools to address data errors in the CMS National Provider File, which impacts the matching of providers to counties. This new approach prevents data loss and inaccuracies that previously occurred when matching solely by ZIP code. Key improvements include exclusion of providers serving on overseas military bases, correction of county assignment for providers with incomplete or incorrect ZIP codes, and retention of providers through corrected ZIP codes.
Mental Health Providers has been corrected
We discovered an error in our method for identifying mental health providers that impacted the Annual Data Release between 2014-2016: we were including organizations as well as individual providers in each county. The correct estimates of the ratios for Mental Health Providers are now available in the Health Snapshots for 2015 and 2016 and in the downloadable data files. Unfortunately, the raw data file used to calculate Mental Health Providers for the 2014 Annual Data Release is not available at this time, so corrections cannot be provided.
Some data are suppressed
A missing value is reported for counties with population greater than 1,000 and 0 mental health providers.
Caution should be used when comparing these estimates across years
The introduction of geospatial tools into the data cleaning process can cause notable shifts in provider-to-population ratios when compared to pervious years. These effects are likely to be most evident in counties with fewer providers or smaller populations, where the refined matching process produces larger proportional changes.
Measure limitations
Providers who transmit electronic health records are required to obtain an identification number, but some providers may not obtain a number. Some mental health providers included in this list may no longer be practicing or accepting new patients, which may result in an overestimate of providers in some communities. Mental health providers are classified by county, but physicians living on the edge of counties or who practice in multiple locations may see patient populations that reside in surrounding counties. Providers are matched to counties by state and ZIP code recorded in the provider address; ZIP codes can and do change and may not map neatly to a single county.
Left side of ratio
The left side of the ratio represents the county population.
Right side of ratio
The right side of the ratio represents the mental health providers corresponding to county population. Mental health providers are defined as psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, counselors, marriage and family therapists, mental health providers that treat alcohol and other drug abuse, and advanced practice nurses specializing in mental health care.
Can This Measure Be Used to Track Progress
Please note method changes and measure limitations when using these data to evaluate progress. It is valuable to contextualize this measure with local data sources where available.
Finding More Data
Disaggregation means breaking data down into smaller, meaningful subgroups. Disaggregated data are often broken down by characteristics of people or where they live. Disaggregated data can reveal inequalities that are otherwise hidden. These data can be disaggregated by:
- Gender
- Subcounty Area
It is difficult to stratify this measure by population demographics. The NPPES NPI Registry website can be used to look up NPI records for specific providers or organizations, or to look for NPI records in a specific location, but the number of results returned for each search is limited.
References
- Bureau of Health Workforce, Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Designated health professional shortage areas statistics. First quarter of fiscal year 2025 designated HPSA quarterly summary. HRSA. December 31, 2024. Accessed February 7, 2025. https://data.hrsa.gov/Default/GenerateHPSAQuarterlyReport
- Rapfogel N. The behavioral health care affordability problem. Center for American Progress. 2022. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-behavioral-health-care-affordability-problem/