Health Outcomes
Depression Prevalence by County — US Rankings
CDC PLACES 2023 · Age-adjusted prevalence · All 3,144 US counties
PLACES tracks adults ever told by a doctor that they had a depressive disorder — a diagnosis-anchored measure, not a symptom screen. Reported prevalence varies widely with mental-health-care access: counties with more primary-care and mental-health providers tend to show higher diagnosed depression, because more residents have been seen. The frequent-mental-distress measure (MHLTH) is a useful counterweight — it asks adults directly about recent mental health and is less sensitive to who is in care. The two rankings often diverge: high MHLTH + low DEPRESSION in a county suggests under-diagnosis, not the absence of disease.
How this ranking is built
Source: CDC PLACES 2023 release. Methodology: BRFSS survey responses pooled across years, fitted with a small-area statistical model, age-adjusted to the 2000 US standard population. Confidence intervals (95%) are shown for each county — wider intervals indicate more uncertainty in the modeled estimate, typically driven by smaller populations.
Lowest Depression Rates — Top 100 Counties
Counties with the lowest reported depression prevalence — these counties show the most favorable position on this measure.
Best 100 counties for Depression.
Highest Depression Rates — Bottom 100 CountiesCounties with the highest reported depression prevalence.
Worst 100 counties for Depression.
What this ranking suggests
Depression prevalence rankings should be read alongside the mental-health-provider-ratio data on each county page and the MHLTH rankings here. A county can score "low" on depression diagnosis and still have a substantial untreated burden — that gap is itself an access story, not a wellness story.
Methodology notes & limitations
Estimates are statistical model outputs, not direct measurements. Small counties have wider confidence intervals; treat narrow rank differences in those rows as within-noise. Counties where the underlying population is too small to support modeling are suppressed entirely (about 1% of US counties). All measures are age-adjusted to the 2000 US standard population. The PLACES dataset uses BRFSS self-reported data — self-report introduces known direction-of-bias in some measures (BMI is under-reported; binge drinking is under-reported), but the bias is roughly uniform across counties so ranking comparability is preserved. See the methodology page for full data-pipeline documentation.
Data source: CDC PLACES 2023 release. Measure ID: DEPRESSION.