See which Michigan counties have highest, lowest ratio of mental-health providers – MLive.com

Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services in suburban Grand Rapids on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019. (Cory Morse | MLive.com)

An estimated 1.4 million Michigan residents -- about one in five of all Michigan adults -- have a mental-health issue.

The most common disorders are anxiety and depression. Yet almost half of Michigan residents diagnosed a serious mental illness are not getting treatment, surveys show.

That's about average for the United States. The state ranks 17th among the 50 states and District of Columbia in access to mental-health services, based on a recent analysis of data by Mental Health America, a Virginia-based nonprofit.

That analysis looked at a range of numbers, including rates of mental illness, numbers mental-health providers and numbers of people with mental-health disorders who are not getting services.

Map showing Mental Health America's overall ranking of prevalance of mental illness and access to care. (Graphic courtesy of Mental Health America)

The state ranked No. 6 in regards to access to mental-health services for adults and No. 20 for access of mental-health services to children.

However, those numbers vary considerably within Michigan in terms of geography: Residents who live in the states urban centers have much better access to care than lightly populated regions in northern Michigan.

Access to mental-health care has become a major issue within the state as demand for services has increased.

Two issues on that front are now in the news. One is a debate over the mental-health budget bill sent by the Legislature to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, which includes a push towards privatization of mental-health services.

Budget bill draws fire for push to privatization of mental health

The second issue is a rule change by the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs that could result in 10,000 licensed professional counselors in Michigan losing their ability to see patients and provide mental-health services in a clinical setting.

New rule could leave tens of thousands in Michigan without their mental-health counselor

This post takes a closer look at the county-level data on access to care, starting with the ratio of residents to mental-health providers.

Ratio of residents to mental-health providers

The map below is based on data collected by the Robert Woods Foundation, which compared each county's population to the number of mental health providers including psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, counselors and marriage and family therapists.

Statewide, there was an average of 404 residents for each provider. But that ranged from 202 residents per provider in Washtenaw County to 4,264 residents per provider in Presque Isle County, which is in the northeast corner of the Lower Peninsula.

You can put your cursor over the a county to see the underlying data. The darker the county, the more residents per provider.

Also included in the underlying data: The average number of "poor mental health days" per month for adult residents, based on the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a phone survey coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control.

Ratio of psychiatrists per county

Particularly acute is the shortage of psychiatrists. More than half of Michigan counties lack a single psychiatrist, based on 2019 provider data, as collected by University of Michigan. The map below, based on U-M, shows psychiatrists per capita in Michigan.

Location of in-patient psychiatric beds

This interactive map shows the location of licensed in-patient psychiatric beds at state-run and private facilities in Michigan. Notice there are no state-operated psychiatric hospitals in Upper Peninsula or the northern half of the Lower Peninsula.

About 40% of licensed psychiatric beds are in private community hospitals, 35% are in private psychiatric facilities, and 25% are in the remaining state-run psychiatric hospitals.

You can put your cursor over a dot to see more details for each location.

Suicide rate by county

The number of suicides in Michigan hit a record high in 2017 and is up 50% since 1999. Below is a look at the suicide rate by county between 2010-2016 based on statistics gathered by the CDC. (The three counties in gray -- Keweenaw, Luce and Schoolcraft, all in the U.P. -- lacked enough data to calculate a suicide rate.)

Once again, you can put your cursor over a county to see the overlying data.

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See which Michigan counties have highest, lowest ratio of mental-health providers - MLive.com