US Mental Health Crisis Meets Limited Treatment Capacity: APA Survey Findings

Demand for mental health treatment in the US continues to strain the available pool of practitioners with approximately 60% of psychologists reporting they can no longer see new patients and 72% of those with waitlists saying their list is longer than before the pandemic.

Data are from the American Psychological Association's 2022 COVID-19 Practioner Impact Survey, released this month.

The survey also captures information on which emotional disorders psychologists are seeing more of and in which populations the demand for mental health care has increased most in the last 12 months.

Primary care clinicians will be interested to know that nearly 3 years into the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for trauma-related and substance-use disorders continues to increase. Equally as concerning is the steep increase in demand for services among adolescents aged 13 to 17 years.

We have summarized the survey findings for at-a-glance review in this short slide show.