Mapping Mental Health Treatment Centers in the US
One of my goals with my community, African-Americans suffering from depression, is to not only build a safe forum for discussing mental health, but to also provide resources for seeking treatment. After a couple of hours (and yes, I do mean hours) I finally found some useful, relevant, mappable data.
While on the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA’s) website, probing for a useful dataset file, I discovered a treatment facility locator. The locator is updated weekly and lists, with several exceptions, most public, private for-profit, and non-profit State-licensed or nationally accredited mental health facilities around the nation. Another plus? The locator allows you to download a real-time .csv file of the records. And even better, you’re able to filter the facility locator data, which is perfect when searching for specific types of facilities (e.g. a Public/government sponsored facility that accepts Medicaid) or services for a specific demographic (e.g. treatment for adolescents or LGBTQ patients). A useful resource for my community? You bet.
I will use the data to generate a map of shapes and will then merge it with the US State shapefile in CardoBD, listing facilities per state. I'll most likely be using the common field “state.” If time permits, I'd like to also try generating a NY-based map using a NYS zip code shapefile.
- Adriele Parker










