Youth Mental Health Outcomes Correlation

Explore the connections between mental health access and outcomes for young people across the United States.

Map Preview

Visualize state-by-state access to mental health resources for youth. (Map placeholder)

Outlier Table

This table highlights states with notable access levels to mental health resources for youth.

State	Classification
Tennessee (TN)	Positive (Best Access)
Alaska (AK)	Negative (Worst Access)
New Mexico (NM)	Negative (Worst Access)

HRSA Cross-Validation Panel

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) identifies the number of mental health practitioners needed per 100,000 people in each state.

State	Practitioners Needed per 100K
Alaska (AK)	5.52
New Mexico (NM)	6.23
Tennessee (TN)	7.94

Downloads

References

Full reference list available upon request. Please contact us for more information.

Contact Us

For inquiries, please reach out to our research team at [email protected].

Companion documents

Need-vs-Access Series · 3 working papers · May 2026

Original research applying the Need-vs-Access Framework to U.S. mental-health access

Original research applying the reusable Need-vs-Access Framework (DB-native tool atlas.need_vs_access_framework_v1) to public-good access domains. Each study joins authoritative federal small-area-estimated need data to provider-supply registries, computes per-geography gap ratios, and identifies states or tracts where supply deviates from what the insurance landscape predicts. Eleven additional access domains are queued (poverty, ELL, jobs, postsecondary, library access, police per capita, maternal care, dental care, broadband, oncology, crisis response).

The Mental Health Access Gap is Two Problems, Not One — 78,815 tracts, adult populations
The Youth Mental Health Access Gap — 35 states, 41.8M under-18, 85× supply range
Phase B: Outcomes Correlation — does the framework predict mortality? (Mostly no, and that's clarifying)