Where mental health care is most underserved

A Health Professional Shortage Area for mental health is a federal designation from HRSA for a geographic area, population group, or facility that has too few mental-health providers relative to its population. Each carries a score from 0 to 25 — higher means a more severe shortage.

Very. Per HRSA, as of 2025-12-31, there were 6,807 designated mental-health shortage areas, only 27.29% of the need was being met, and an estimated 6,800 additional practitioners would be needed to remove the designations.

Shortage data shows where access to mental-health care is hardest, which can inform where to offer telehealth, where to open or expand a practice, or where mission-driven and sliding-scale work is most needed. It is a demand-for-care signal grounded in federal designations rather than guesswork.

Not directly. HPSA status reflects overall access need, which often correlates with Medicaid and lower-income populations rather than cash-pay capacity. For a private-pay practice decision, weigh shortage data against local household income. We are honest about this rather than implying shortage equals cash demand.

HRSA's public Health Professional Shortage Areas designation file. Per-state counts here are a faithful, deduplicated read of the current file (2025-12-31); the national figures are HRSA's own published statistics. Because HRSA's quarterly summary uses a fixed snapshot date and a specific methodology, totals can differ slightly.