Health Status
Frequent Mental Distress by County — US Rankings
CDC PLACES 2023 · Age-adjusted prevalence · 2,956/3,144 reporting counties (94% coverage)
Frequent mental distress is the share of adults who report their mental health was "not good" on 14 or more days in the past 30 days. It is a symptom-anchored measure — distinct from the diagnosis-anchored DEPRESSION ranking, which only counts adults who have been formally told they have a depressive disorder. The two rankings can diverge sharply in the same county, and that gap is itself informative: high frequent mental distress combined with low diagnosed depression typically signals under-served populations rather than absence of need.
How this ranking is built
Source: CDC PLACES 2023 measure year. 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 Frequent Mental Distress Rates — Top 100 Counties
Counties with the lowest reported frequent mental distress prevalence — these counties show the most favorable position on this measure.
Best 100 counties for Frequent Mental Distress.
Highest Frequent Mental Distress Rates — Bottom 100 CountiesCounties with the highest reported frequent mental distress prevalence.
Worst 100 counties for Frequent Mental Distress.
What this ranking suggests
This is one of the most actionable rankings in the dataset for local public-health teams because it is symptom-based, not access-based. A county can show low diagnosed depression and still be in distress; this measure catches that. Compare against the mental-health-provider-ratio data on the county page.
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. Exact observed/total coverage is reported above. Rows without a reported estimate are excluded for this measure. An absent value may reflect source availability or suppression; the checked-in artifact does not attribute every missing value to one cause. 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.
By HealthByCounty Editorial Team
Page revised
Data source: CDC PLACES 2023 measure year. Measure ID: MHLTH.