October 12, 2023 – Nebraska is the state with the very best levels of mental health, in response to 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 latest 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
- Nationwide violent crime rate in response to an FBI reporting system
- Access to exercise opportunities comparable to public parks and physical activity facilities
- Air pollution
- Unconnected youth rate, that’s, the proportion of individuals aged 16 to 19 who’re neither working nor attending school, in response to census data
The report's authors noted that the speed of unconnected youth was weighted similarly to many other variables within the evaluation, but had a big impact on a state's final rating. The authors wrote that unconnected youth “are at increased risk for violence, smoking, alcohol use, 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, Nebraska, the speed of disconnected youth was the bottom of all 50 states at 4.3%. Other aspects that put Nebraska at the highest of the list included 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 no less than 14 days of the last 30 days in 2021, in response to CDC survey results compiled for one more 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.
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