Eye On Illinois: Always room for improvement on mental health care access

If you needed to speak to a mental health professional, where would you start?

Perhaps you haven’t asked this question. Perhaps you’ve also not pondered where you’d go for torn knee ligaments. Most people know the way to the nearest emergency room, but most people who have sought such care have experienced the difference between a generalist – no matter how qualified – and a specialist in a given field.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration publishes a free annual directory of treatment facilities, posted at samhsa.gov as either a PDF or spreadsheet file. The website also points to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org, as well as its own help line, at 800-662-4357 or text a ZIP code to 435748.

I came across SAMHSA when reading a news release from a different website announcing “Illinois has the ninth worst access to mental health care in America.” The site used the 2023 SAMHSA directory, compared the number of facilities to each state’s population and ranked the states by number of facilities per 100,000 residents.

With a total of 8,707 facilities in the directory and counting 334,233,854 Americans, the “study” calculated a national average of 2.61 facilities per 100,000 residents. It ranked Alaska as the best, with 76 facilities for its 733,583 residents and Texas the worst at 297 for more than 30 million people.

Unfortunately, the report didn’t incorporate other useful factors, like the amount of mental health professionals working at each facility or the location of the facilities in the context of a given state’s population density, let alone less quantifiable data like wait time for a new patient to get an appointment or the role of health insurance in matching patients with providers.

Mental Health America, a nonprofit agency focused on “the mental health equity gap” (mhanational.org), issues its own annual report blending “access to insurance, access to treatment, quality and cost of insurance, access to special education and workforce availability.” That list ranks Illinois ninth best, with Alaska 34th and Texas 46th.

While ninth place is markedly better than 42nd, even the more detailed analysis evinces room for improvement, which is one reason I occasionally highlight state government’s efforts to improve the ability of Illinoisans to promptly and completely access quality mental health treatment.

I intended to write this column as little more than a caveat to be cautious with headline numbers, studies and rankings. While that’s definitely still a valid takeaway, regardless of topic, I keep returning to my opening question: Where would you turn? Who would you call? How long would it take to find real help?

Ask now, with the fleeting luxury of time to find an answer.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on Twitter @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.