There are approximately 106,000 licensed psychologists in the United States,1 but the distribution of those psychologists is uneven across the country. The number of licensed psychologists ranges from zero to 3,600 per county. Approximately 33 percent of counties have no records of licensed psychologists. Relative to the national average, more licensed psychologists are located in California, in the Northeast and in the Miami and Seattle areas. The lowest numbers of licensed psychologists are in an area that stretches from the South to the center of the nation.
— Luona Lin, MPP, Peggy Christidis, PhD, and Karen Stamm, PhD
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1 American Psychological Association (2015). APA state licensing board list. [Unpublished special analysis]. Washington, DC: Author. The number of licensed psychologists was based on active doctoral-level licensed psychologist records from 2012–15 state licensing boards in 50 states and the District of Columbia.
2 The map was based on the Getis-Ord statistic generated from county-level hot spot analysis based on the number of licensed psychologists per county. Different concentrations were statistically compared to the national average at the following probability levels: very low concentration (p < .01), low concentration (p < .05), high concentration (p < .05) and very high concentration (p < .01). Counties with no records of licensed psychologists were treated as zeroes. Due to large proportions of records with missing addresses in Hawaii, Oklahoma and Utah, state means of licensed psychologists per county for these three states were used in the analysis.