Currently, around 47.6 million Americans are living with a mental illness and 20.3 million adults are living with a substance use disorder (SUD). In 2016, only 43% (20.6 million) of adults living with any mental illness received mental health (MH) care, and only 3.7 million adults (18.2%) living with an SUD received any treatment. Peer…
This webinar featured two health workforce training experts who shared best practice strategies for approaching workforce training program evaluation, navigating evaluation success and challenges, and student training experiences. Their experiences along with viewer feedback will inform development of the Behavioral Health Workforce Research Center’s evaluation resources for health workforce training programs across the country.
Subspecialists of psychiatrists that treat vulnerable populations are in short supply across the country. Discrepancies in supply between rural and urban areas are likely, but little is known about how these subspecialties are geographically distributed. This report examined county-level data of different subspecialties of psychiatrists to determine how the subspecialties were distributed and whether there…
Minimum data sets (MDS) can be effective for the standardized collection of granular workforce data that allows policymakers to confront important health access issues. In 2016, the Behavioral Health Workforce Research center developed and refined a comprehensive MDS for the entire behavioral health workforce. This report describes a study that conducted interviews and focus groups…
As behavioral health issues largely manifest during school age, providing support for youth in a school setting allows for a greater chance of behavioral health care usage for them where they spend much of their time. This descriptive study expands on the information collected in the 2013–2014 School-Based Health Alliance (SBHA) national census of school-based…
After the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, behavioral health coverage has expanded to cover more US citizens. However, access to behavioral health services remains an issue, owing in part to maldistribution of the workforce. The psychiatric workforce, in particular, is in the middle of a…
Accurate enumeration of behavioral health workforce supply and characteristics is important for workforce planning. Although numerous data sources exist for the behavioral health workforce, all have substantial data limitations and comparability across data sources is low. A behavioral health workforce Minimum Data Set (MDS) was developed in 2016 to improve data quality. This qualitative report…
The United States’ rural communities are vulnerable populations with less access to behavioral health care than urban communities, but the same or worse needs. This report helps to understand the characteristics of the behavioral health workforce in rural areas, the services offered by rural provider organizations, and the barriers these organizations face to providing services.
A Health Resources and Services Administration report stated that 77% of US counties experienced severe psychiatrist shortages in 2017, and yet 1 in 5 American adults experience a mental illness in a given year. There is a pressing need to map the supply of prescribing psychiatric workforce. This report maps the supply of psychiatrists, advanced…
Authorizing nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe medication-assisted treatment (MAT) has the potential to expand Americans’ access to opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment, as nurse practitioners are more likely to serve rural and Medicaid-eligible populations than physicians, and physician assistants specialize in expanding physicians’ practice. This report helps to understand how the Comprehensive Addiction…
