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If you have a mental health disorder, then mental health experts will most likely to advise you to engage in mental health treatment, but many people are reluctant to engage in treatment for various reasons, which we totally understand – in this article, we’ll report on the numbers of adults over age 18 in the United States who engaged in mental health treatment in 2022 with the goal of reassuring people who do get treatment that they’re not alone.

The article “Characteristics of Adults Treated at Mental Health Treatment Centers in the US, 2022” used data from the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH 2022) to report the following information:

  • Mental health treatment at an outpatient mental health treatment center
  • Mental health treatment in emergency room
  • Other inpatient mental health services

After collecting that data, the research team used statistical analysis to determine the percentage of those patients who:

  1. Reported suicidality: ideation and plans
  2. Had co-occurring alcohol use disorder (ADU) or substance use disorder (SUD)
  3. Received hospital-based mental health care

To set the stage for this data, we’ll share with the big-picture data on mental illness. This general information on the prevalence of mental illness will give us the context and perspective we need to interpret the treatment prevalence data that follows.

How Many People Had Mental Illness in 2022?

We collected this data from the same source as the study on outpatient treatment rates we introduce above, the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2022 NSDUH).

Prevalence of Mental Illness, U.S., 2022

  • 1% of adults in the U.S. reported any mental illness (AMI)
    • 50% did not receive treatment of any kind
    • 6% wanted treatment but did not receive treatment
  • 0% of adults in the U.S. reported serious mental illness (SMI)
    • 33% did not receive treatment of any kind
    • 7% wanted treatment but did not receive treatment
  • 8% of adults in the U.S. reported experiencing a major depressive episode (MDE), i.e. depression
    • 40% did not receive treatment of any kind
    • 3% wanted treatment but did not receive treatment
  • 2% of adults in the U.S. reported experiencing a major depressive episode with severe impairment (MDE-SI)
    • [Treatment data not available]

To put numbers to those figures, 23 percent of adults is 59.3 million people, 6 percent is 15.4 million people, 8.8 percent is 22.5 million people, and 6.2 percent is 15.9 million people. In other words, literally millions of people in the U.S. reported mental illness in 2022.

Now let’s get straight to the treatment data from the new study.

Who Got Mental Health Treatment in 2022? The Final Verified Data

We’ll take a moment to explain something about statistics. The reason we can use a sample of people and then make statements about an entire population, i.e. take a small number and interpret it as representative of a larger number, is that, in a word, it’s accurate: the practice has been verified by decades of mathematical/statistical research conducted by qualified experts.

Below, you’ll see the word weighted. In this context, that means the researchers used well-established mathematical formulae to determine the number of people their sample set accurately represents.

Among the 47,100 adult survey participants, the research team found:

Total:

  • 13% reported using outpatient specialty mental health services.
Weighted statistical analysis indicates this accurately represents 27,204,255 adults.

By gender:

  • Female: 62%
  • Male: 38%

Ethnicity:

  • Hispanic: 12%
  • Non-White/Non-Hispanic: 16%
  • White: 72%

Sexual orientation:

  • Gay/lesbian: 6%
  • Bisexual: 16%
  • Heterosexual: 78%

Mental health status:

  • Past year serious psychological distress: 45%
  • No past year serious psychological distress: 55%

Next, the researchers reported the demographic groups most likely to engage in treatment:

By Age:

  • 35 years or older: 29%
  • 18 to 25 years: 22%

Residential location:

  • Non-metropolitan area: 39%
  • Metropolitan area: 25%

Income:

  • Below the federal poverty line: 39%
  • Above federal poverty line: 24%

Mental health status:

  • Serious psychological distress: 31%
  • No serious psychological distress: 23%

Insurance type:

  • Public insurance: 72%
  • Commercial insurance: 18%

Finally, the researchers reported the percentage of people who used – or didn’t use – outpatient mental health service by their present level of suicidality, co-occurring alcohol/substance use disorder, and reported use of inpatient mental health treatment.

Suicidality:

Reported suicidal ideation:

  • Used mental health services: 41%
  • Didn’t use mental health services: 22%

Reported making a suicide plan:

  • Used mental health services: 43%
  • Didn’t use mental health services: 23%

Co-occurring substance use disorder:

Reported past year alcohol use disorder (AUD):

  • Used mental health services: 30%
  • Didn’t use mental health services: 26%

Reported past year opioid use disorder (OUD):

  • Used mental health services: 58%
  • Didn’t use mental health services: 25%

Used hospital-based mental health service:

Reported past year mental health emergency room treatment:

  • Used mental health services: 62%
  • Didn’t use mental health services: 24%

Reported any past year inpatient mental health treatment:

  • Used mental health services: 65%
  • Didn’t use mental health services: 23%

We’ll give you a shortcut for translating those percentages to actual figures. Think of the entire sample set as 27 million, and then think of ten percent of that as 2.7 million, or 3 million, for the sake of simplicity. In reference to the final two bullet points, that means we can quickly estimate that 65 percent as just over 18 million and 23 percent as just over 6 million.

We’ll use this shortcut to discuss this data in the section below.

Needed Treatment, Didn’t Get Treatment: How We Can Reduce the Mental Health Treatment Gap

When we collate and summarize the data above, we see the following. In 2022:

Needed Treatment, Didn’t Get Treatment

  • 6 million + people who engaged in suicidal ideation
  • 6 million + people who made a suicide plan
  • 5 million + people with alcohol use disorder
  • 6 million + people with opioid use disorder
  • 30 million + people with any mental illness
  • 5 million + people with serious mental illness
  • 9 million + people with a major depressive episode

That’s something we can fix.

It’s something we need to fix.

That’s why we need studies like the one we use in this article: they show us where we are, what we need to do, and help us focus on where we need to go. And for the record, where we need to go is to a place where everyone who needs treatment gets the treatment they need, and has access to the care that enables them to live the life of their choosing.