LAUSR

Significance Against the backdrop of the current US mental health crisis, this study assembles 86 data sources to map, nationally, all psychiatrists and psychotherapists. Computationally modeling the relationship between access to mental health care providers and suicide, we find that improved spatial-social accessibility to psychiatrists and, to a lesser extent, to psychotherapists, is associated with reduced risk—even after controlling for a wide host of factors predictive of suicide. Locally, inequalities in mental health care access are additionally linked to substantially higher suicide risk. These findings demonstrate that nowadays, in the United States, access to mental health care is misaligned with need, and suggest that interventions to alleviate the access disparities currently impacting millions of Americans can prevent unnecessary death and suffering.