Just realized the link to the second article will not go to the correct page here is part of the article..



Although it is too soon to get a big-picture assessment of the effect the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has had on US mental health services, a new report from Mental Health America (MHA, formerly the National Mental Health Association) offers a snapshot of the nation's mental health care status based on the most recent data, and it is not a pretty picture.
"[The report shows] there is tremendous variation across the states, which means that states are responsible for the mental health of their citizens and have the power to improve it if they invest in it," MHA president and CEO Paul Gionfriddo told Medscape Medical News.
"It [also] shows that political philosophy doesn't matter ― conservative and liberal states are both in the top tier," he added.
The report ranked states and the District of Columbia on measures reflecting mental health status and accessibility of care using the most recently available national data, mostly from 2012, before the ACA went into effect, but ranging from 2010 to 2013.
Measures included rates of mental illness in adults and children, drug abuse or thoughts of suicide, rates of the failure to receive treatment among adults and children who were uninsured, and state hospital readmission rates.
In the overall ranking, the top five states, reflecting the lowest prevalence of mental illness and the highest rates of access to care, were Delaware (5), North Dakota (4), Maine (3), Vermont (2), and Massachusetts, which was ranked number 1.
The five states with the highest prevalence of mental illness and the lowest rates of access to care were Louisiana (47), Washington (48), Nevada (49), Mississippi (50) and Arizona (51).
The report showed that overall, 42.5 million adults (18%) suffered from any kind of mental illness; 19.7 million (8.46%) of the population had a substance abuse proble