Georgia Mental Health Provider Access: Assessing the Need for New Providers

Abstract

Introduction: Access to mental healthcare is an issue of public concern across the country, especially following the COVID-19 lockdowns. Aggregated health outcome data is frequently utilized by leaders and policy makers to determine the need of additional funding, programing, and providers in underserved locations. We aim to determine if aggregated mental health outcome data can be utilized to identify areas with inadequate mental healthcare access.

Method: Utilizing cross-sectional methods, we analyzed aggregate Georgia county health rankings from 2022 utilizing normal linear regression and quartile differences to identify any significant associations between mental health outcomes and the population-mental health provider ratio. Specifically, we evaluate the average number of poor mental health days, percentage of adults in frequent mental distress, suicides per 100,000 population, and drug overdose per 100,000 population as independent variables. When natural log-transformed the outcome variable was normally distributed and was utilized for the regressions. A clinically significant difference of 50 citizens to 1 mental health provider was set a priori for the evaluation of quartile differences.

Results: The average number of poor mental health days (β=.252, 95% CI [.1259, .3781], pth percentile to those in the 25th percentile we see that there is an increase of 1.63:1 and 1.37:1 respectively.

Conclusion: Although two of the 4 mental health variables of interest were found to be statistically significant there was no clinical significance. Therefore, none of these mental health outcome measures can be solely used to identify Georgia counties in need of additional mental health providers or programing.

Keywords

County Health Rankings, Mental Health Outcome Data, Epidemiology, Mental Health Provider Need, Inform Programs

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Georgia Mental Health Provider Access: Assessing the Need for New Providers

Introduction: Access to mental healthcare is an issue of public concern across the country, especially following the COVID-19 lockdowns. Aggregated health outcome data is frequently utilized by leaders and policy makers to determine the need of additional funding, programing, and providers in underserved locations. We aim to determine if aggregated mental health outcome data can be utilized to identify areas with inadequate mental healthcare access.

Method: Utilizing cross-sectional methods, we analyzed aggregate Georgia county health rankings from 2022 utilizing normal linear regression and quartile differences to identify any significant associations between mental health outcomes and the population-mental health provider ratio. Specifically, we evaluate the average number of poor mental health days, percentage of adults in frequent mental distress, suicides per 100,000 population, and drug overdose per 100,000 population as independent variables. When natural log-transformed the outcome variable was normally distributed and was utilized for the regressions. A clinically significant difference of 50 citizens to 1 mental health provider was set a priori for the evaluation of quartile differences.

Results: The average number of poor mental health days (β=.252, 95% CI [.1259, .3781], pth percentile to those in the 25th percentile we see that there is an increase of 1.63:1 and 1.37:1 respectively.

Conclusion: Although two of the 4 mental health variables of interest were found to be statistically significant there was no clinical significance. Therefore, none of these mental health outcome measures can be solely used to identify Georgia counties in need of additional mental health providers or programing.