- In 2016, 11.8 million American adults believed that they had a need for mental health services during the past year that went unmet. Slightly more than half of them — approximately 6.3 million — received some mental health services, but said they needed more services than they received. Fewer than half (5.5 million) did not receive any mental health services during that time.1,2
- Thirty-eight percent of people who reported an unmet need said that they could not afford the cost of treatment, 28 percent said that they thought at the time that they could handle the problem without treatment, 21 percent said that they did not know where to go for services and 20 percent said that they did not have enough time for treatment.
Source: 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health
Note: Response categories are not mutually exclusive; respondents could indicate multiple reasons for not receiving mental health services.
By Peggy Christidis, PhD, Luona Lin, MPP, and Karen Stamm, PhD
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