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psychiatric beds · 1955 psychiatric beds · today
One Hundred Years of The Untreated
America closed its psychiatric hospitals. It never built what was supposed to replace them.
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One Hundred Years of

The Untreated

State-level variation in psychiatric beds per 100,000 population.
Report   06 / 10
States   50 + DC
National rate
11.1per 100k
2024 average
Highest state
38.5per 100k
Mississippi
Lowest state
3.4per 100k
Arizona
Shortage areas
160M
people in MH HPSAs
Figure 03 Beds per 100,000 by state

The Geography of absence

Psychiatric bed availability varies by an order of magnitude across states. The map below shows beds per 100,000 population. Blue indicates higher availability; red indicates crisis-level shortage.
< 8/100k (crisis) 8-15/100k 15-25/100k > 25/100k
HRSA shortage areas

According to HRSA, over 160 million Americans live in a designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA). The shortage is most acute in rural counties, where the nearest psychiatric bed may be over 100 miles away.

States with the fewest beds tend to have the highest rates of SMI in jails. The correlation is not perfect, but the pattern is consistent: where beds disappeared, incarceration filled the gap.

The 50-for-50 benchmark

The Treatment Advocacy Center recommends a minimum of 50 beds per 100,000 as the threshold for adequate psychiatric capacity. In 2024, no state meets this threshold. The national average is 11.1 per 100,000 — less than one-quarter of the recommended minimum.