Ranking America's Mental Health: An Analysis of Depression Across ...( Satellite Newsf...),Health

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Date of Satellite Feeds: Thursday, 11/29 and Friday, 11/30

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 /PRNewswire/ --

Details: 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 a variety 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.

State Rankings and more information about the study is available at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net

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,
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