In a first, rural people in a national survey say mental health and addiction treatment are the top needs in rural health

Researchers asked rural stakeholders to name their most important public-health
priorities through 2030.  (Rural Healthy People 2030 chart; for a larger version click on it)

For the past 20 years, primary-care access was listed by health-care stakeholders as the top concern for rural people, but a recent survey shows that for the first time in two decades, the focus has changed mental health and addiction treatment, reports Liz Carey of The Daily Yonder. "Rural Healthy People 2030, released by the Southwest Rural Health Resource Center, surveyed a national sample of people. . . . Participants included people working in health care, public administration, education, human services, and other fields. . . . While access to health care remained one of the top five issues according to survey respondents, researchers said, the growing impact of mental health and addiction took the number one and two spots on the list regardless of age, race, region or occupation."

Survey researcher Timothy Callaghan told Carey, "For the past two decades, health-care access has been, far and away, the most important topic no matter how we cut the data. The fact that mental health and addiction came out ahead of health-care access this time certainly surprised us, but when you start thinking about the context of the past decade and the context of the pandemic in which you launched the survey, the findings are a bit less surprising."

The pandemic's impact highlighted mental health needs. Carey writes, "A survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation and CNN found that 90% of the American public felt the country was facing a mental health crisis. Adults across the country during the pandemic reported increased symptoms of anxiety, depression, hopelessness and sadness and suicidal ideation, as well as increased drug and alcohol use." The crisis hit rural areas more dramatically due to a lack of services before 2020, Carey reports: "Behavioral health providers were scarce in rural areas even before the coronavirus pandemic hit. . . . The need for their services is rising while access to providers is declining . . . . For people with substance-abuse problems in rural areas already under-served by mental health and behavioral health professionals, as clinics close, practitioners move to telehealth, and funding for services runs out, experts say."

Callaghan told Carey that the study shows where rural-health stakeholders want rural health systems to focus their efforts: "We now have a better sense of the areas that are particularly in need of rural health investment. We now know that addressing addiction and addressing mental health issues have become increasingly important to rural experts over the past decade, and while health-care access remains important. . . . We nonetheless have to start prioritizing the issues that are most important, which are addiction and mental health."