Depression is a devastating illness that affects more than 19 million Americans. Despite its prevalence, depression often goes undiagnosed and untreated. Ranking America's Mental Health is a first-of-its-kind study examining the statistical relationship between avariety of access-to-care measures and mental health outcomes for depression. Mental Health America will unveil the findings of this study and present a ranking of depression across the states.
Mental Health America created two different rankings of the states: one showing the state rankings of depression and one showing the state rank in terms suicide rates. The depression rankings were based on the percent of adolescents and adults with depression, the percent of adults with serious psychological distress and reported mental health days. The data come from nationally representative surveys conducted by the United States government.
The state rankings of depression status were correlated with statistically significant access-to-care measures. The study found the following 5 factors to be associated with better depression status and lower suicide rates:
Mental health resources: The more mental health professionals per capita in a state, the lower the suicide rate.
Barriers to treatment: The fewer people reporting that they could not afford healthcare, the lower the suicide rate and the better the state's depression status. In addition, the fewer people reporting unmet mental health care needs, the better the state's depression status.
Mental health treatment utilization: The more people receiving mental health treatment, the lower the suicide rate.
Socioeconomic issues: The more educated the population and the greater the percentage with health insurance, the lower the suicide rate. The more educated the population, the better the state's depression status.
Mental health policies: The more generous a state's mental health parity coverage (meaning the state provide health insurance coverage for mental health and substance abuse problems similar to general health coverage), the more people receive mental health services.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I can see how it would be so different in the suicide and depression rates on whether or not the people have insurance. Its sad to know though that the rates are still rising for suicide and depression. I think that it is partly because of the financial problem and how expensive doctors and health care are becoming. I suffer from depression and I am doing better now and owe it all to insightpros.com but I do understand where others feel there is no hope. Its more about finding the right people to help that really do care and then going from there.
Post a Comment