October 12, 2023 – Nebraska is the state with the very best levels of mental health, in line with a brand new rating that ranges from violent crime rates to air pollution. Rounding out the highest five spots were Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Rhode Island.
The recent report“The Best States for Your Mental Health” was commissioned by a Georgia-based company called Soliant, which focuses on healthcare recruiting. In the report, the authors said they sought to incorporate a broader set of variables than simply measuring access to mental health care.
The rating was based on these eight things:
- The average variety of mentally unhealthy days per thirty days reported by individuals who participated in an annual CDC health survey
- The ratio of mental health providers to the state population, based on the Federal Register of Medicare and Medicaid Accepted Providers
- Suicide rate amongst people ages 15 to 24 within the state between 2018 and 2021
- Unemployment rate for people aged 16 and over
- Statewide violent crime rate in line with an FBI reporting system
- Access to exercise opportunities equivalent to public parks and physical activity facilities
- Air pollution
- Disconnected youth rate, which is the proportion of individuals ages 16 to 19 who're neither working nor attending school, in line with census data
The report's authors found that the speed of disconnected youth was weighted similarly to many other variables within the evaluation, but had a major impact on a state's final rating. The authors wrote that socially disconnected youth “are at increased risk for violence, smoking, alcohol consumption, and marijuana use, and may have emotional deficits and lower cognitive and academic skills than their peers who are working and/or in school.”
In the top-ranked state of Nebraska, the youth disconnected rate was 4.3%, the bottom of all 50 states. Other aspects that pushed Nebraska to the highest of the list included having certainly one of the five lowest unemployment rates and certainly one of the five lowest rates of poor mental health days.
Nationwide, nearly 15% of U.S. adults reported poor mental health on a minimum of 14 days of the last 30 days of 2021, in line with CDC survey results compiled for an additional report published by the CDC United Health Foundation.
According to this, around one in five people within the USA suffers from a mental illness CDC.
If you or someone you recognize is struggling, help is out there 24/7 via phone, chat or text on 988 Lifeline. It's free and confidential. Call or text 988 or leave on-line to speak.