Access to Mental Health Care Services and Suicide Rates in the United States

Abstract

We examine the causal effect of improvements in access to mental care providers on suicide rates in the United States. We track the universe of practice locations of psychiatric and psychological health care providers from 2016 to 2019. We construct a county‐level index to measure proximity to these facilities, accounting for local variations in demand for and supply of mental health care services. To address the endogeneity between the location of these medical facilities in a given county, we use the implementation of prescriptive authority for psychologists () as an instrument. Our IV results show a 10% enhancement in access translates to an additional three providers per mile, resulting in a 3% reduction, equivalent to 1.6 fewer suicides per 100,000 population within a county.