Assessing Local Impact on Mental Health from Mental Healthcare Facilities

Abstract

Despite improving economic factors from the year 2014 to 2017 and significant increases in the numbers of mental healthcare facilities across the country, nationwide mental health worsened during that same time period. This thesis aims to identify the effect that mental healthcare providers have on individuals who live within their counties. Previous research has found evidence of mental health stigma and lack of insurance being significant factor which affect access to mental healthcare providers, indicating that the relationship between providers and mental health may not be a straightforward one. Various methods are used to explore this relationship, including a fixed-effects regression and propensity score matching. Findings from this thesis suggest that there was a slight positive impact from increases in mental healthcare providers from 2014 – 2017, where counties experiencing greater increases saw better mental healthcare outcomes than those with less. These results come from a propensity score matching analysis. A fixed-effects regression is also utilized, with contradicting results. This paper also finds a very high correlation between physical and mental health, suggesting that the two issues should be paired together more often, and are highly related.