The US Mental Health Workforce, Mapped
Where 1,481,478 active mental-health providers actually practice: every county in the country, from the federal NPI registry. Counselors, psychologists, social workers, marriage & family therapists, psychiatrists, and psychiatric nurse practitioners. One snapshot, one methodology, free to reuse.
Open data: every table on this page is downloadable as CSV and licensed CC BY 4.0. Reuse it with attribution. See the methodology.
1,481,478
Individual providers with an in-scope behavioral-health taxonomy and a practice address in the 50 states or DC. That is 433.5 per 100,000 residents nationally.
5.2×
District of Columbia has 989.6 providers per 100k; Alabama has 191.9. Same country, 5.2× the per-capita workforce.
126
Of 3,144 counties, 126 have essentially no in-scope provider at any practice address in the registry.
+18%
84,795 providers first entered the NPI registry in 2025 vs 71,615 in 2019, a post-2020 acceleration in registry entries. The full series is charted below.
Key findings
- Mental-health provider density varies 5.2× between the highest- and lowest-density U.S. jurisdictions. District of Columbia registers 989.6 active providers per 100,000 residents; Alabama registers 191.9. #
- 126 counties, out of 3,144 nationwide, have essentially no in-scope provider practice address in the registry. #
- Counselors and social workers together make up 74% of the registered workforce; prescribers (psychiatrists and psychiatric NPs) are 9%. #
- 84,795 providers first entered the NPI registry in 2025, versus 71,615 in 2019. These are registry entries, not licenses issued. #
- 63% of providers share a registered practice location with six or more in-scope providers; only 22% are the sole provider at their address. #
Providers per 100,000 residents, by county
Each county is shaded by active in-scope providers per 100,000 residents, allocated from practice ZIP codes. Hover a county for its figures; click it to open that state's page. Counties are drawn hollow with no rate when they have under 3 allocated providers or under 1,000 residents, because numbers that small don't make a reliable per-100k figure, and when a single practice address holds at least half of the providers registered there, because that rate describes one employer's registrations rather than local supply. Their counts are still in the table and CSV.
Use this chart
<a href="https://www.certification.app/data/mental-health-workforce"><img src="https://www.certification.app/data/mental-health-workforce/charts/us-county-density.svg" alt="US mental health providers per 100,000 residents by county" width="100%" /></a> <p style="font-size:12px">"US mental health providers per 100k by county, June 2026 snapshot" by <a href="https://www.certification.app/data/mental-health-workforce">certification.app</a>, CC BY 4.0</p>
How all 51 jurisdictions rank: District of Columbia to Alabama
Hover a state for its rate; every state links to a page with its county map, provider mix, and registry-entry trend. The same figures appear in the table.
| # | State | Providers | Per 100k |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | 6,864 | 989.6 |
| 2 | Alaska | 6,945 | 942 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | 67,140 | 938.5 |
| 4 | Oregon | 40,053 | 937.2 |
| 5 | Vermont | 4,623 | 717.1 |
| 6 | Maine | 9,452 | 668 |
| 7 | Washington | 53,146 | 664.2 |
| 8 | Connecticut | 23,913 | 648.3 |
| 9 | New Mexico | 13,693 | 644.2 |
| 10 | Rhode Island | 7,061 | 633.5 |
| 11 | Colorado | 36,559 | 608 |
| 12 | California | 229,073 | 582.1 |
| 13 | New York | 112,519 | 562.5 |
| 14 | Ohio | 63,778 | 535.9 |
| 15 | Utah | 18,620 | 526.2 |
| 16 | Oklahoma | 21,374 | 518.4 |
| 17 | Maryland | 32,280 | 515.2 |
| 18 | Michigan | 51,204 | 505.6 |
| 19 | New Hampshire | 7,050 | 498.1 |
| 20 | Montana | 5,566 | 486.2 |
| 21 | Wyoming | 2,862 | 486.1 |
| 22 | Louisiana | 21,407 | 463.5 |
| 23 | Nebraska | 9,059 | 448.9 |
| 24 | Minnesota | 25,965 | 445.3 |
| 25 | Illinois | 56,193 | 441.8 |
| 26 | North Dakota | 3,482 | 435.6 |
| 27 | Delaware | 4,511 | 425.6 |
| 28 | New Jersey | 38,996 | 408.4 |
| 29 | Kentucky | 18,646 | 404.7 |
| 30 | Idaho | 8,145 | 401.3 |
| 31 | Hawaii | 5,688 | 397 |
| 32 | North Carolina | 44,456 | 397 |
| 33 | Pennsylvania | 50,517 | 386.8 |
| 34 | Kansas | 11,497 | 386.2 |
| 35 | Arkansas | 11,122 | 357.1 |
| 36 | Nevada | 11,493 | 350.2 |
| 37 | Wisconsin | 20,848 | 349 |
| 38 | Missouri | 21,153 | 337.3 |
| 39 | Virginia | 29,924 | 337 |
| 40 | West Virginia | 5,546 | 314 |
| 41 | South Dakota | 2,928 | 313.1 |
| 42 | Mississippi | 8,728 | 295.4 |
| 43 | Iowa | 9,423 | 291 |
| 44 | South Carolina | 15,770 | 283.1 |
| 45 | Florida | 66,391 | 283 |
| 46 | Indiana | 19,727 | 282.9 |
| 47 | Tennessee | 19,801 | 270.7 |
| 48 | Arizona | 20,199 | 264.9 |
| 49 | Georgia | 27,494 | 243.3 |
| 50 | Texas | 68,626 | 216.4 |
| 51 | Alabama | 9,968 | 191.9 |
Who makes up the workforce
Each provider is counted once, under their primary NPPES taxonomy. Counselors and social workers together are 74% of the workforce; prescribers (psychiatrists and psychiatric NPs) are 9%.
New providers keep entering the registry
Active providers by the year they first entered the NPI registry. Registry entry is not licensure. Clinicians typically register when they start billing, so this measures registrations, not the workforce itself. Entries have accelerated: 84,795 in 2025 alone. 2026 shows a partial year. Years before 2010 are omitted: the registry opened in 2005 and its first years reflect existing clinicians signing up, not new entries.
Most providers don't practice alone
Grouping providers by normalized practice address: 22% are the only in-scope provider registered at their location. Address matching is only a proxy. An office building can merge distinct practices, and NPPES addresses lag moves, so read these as location counts rather than organizational affiliation.
Download the data
All files are plain CSV with a commented header carrying the snapshot vintage and license. Everything here is CC BY 4.0, attribution: certification.app, "US Mental Health Workforce" (June 2026 NPPES snapshot). No sign-up, no rate limits.
Providers by state CSV ↓
Population, provider count, providers per 100k, and rank for all 51 jurisdictions.
Providers by county CSV ↓
All 3,144 counties: FIPS, population, allocated providers, rate (with suppression flag).
Provider-type mix by state CSV ↓
Counselor / psychologist / social worker / MFT / psychiatrist / psychiatric-NP counts per state.
Registry-entry cohorts CSV ↓
New NPI registrations per year (2005–2026), national and by state and provider type.
Practice-location size CSV ↓
Providers at single- vs multi-provider practice locations, by state.
Chart images SVG + PNG
The national maps and every state county map ship as static SVGs and high-resolution PNGs with baked-in attribution. Copy the embed snippet under any map, or browse /data/mental-health-workforce/charts/.
What this data can't tell you
Address ≠ service location
NPPES records one practice address per provider. Telehealth caseloads, satellite offices, and community-based work are invisible; a county with few registered addresses is not necessarily unserved.
Headcount ≠ capacity
Every provider counts as one, whether they see four clients a week or forty. These are headcounts, not full-time equivalents or appointment availability.
Taxonomy ≠ license
Providers self-select taxonomy codes at registration. A code is not proof of an active state license, and licensees who never bill insurance may hold no NPI at all.
The registry lags reality
Providers who retire or move without updating NPPES linger at stale addresses. Deactivated records are excluded, but deactivation is often delayed by years.
Full inclusion rules, allocation method, and caveats: methodology →
Frequently asked questions
How many mental health providers are there in the United States?
The June 2026 NPPES registry lists 1,481,478 active individual providers in the 50 states and DC across six behavioral-health professions: 650,933 counselors, 450,588 social workers, 151,568 psychologists, 100,181 marriage & family therapists, 68,405 psychiatrists, and 59,803 psychiatric nurse practitioners. That works out to 433.5 providers per 100,000 residents.
Which state has the most mental health providers per capita?
Among the 50 states, Alaska leads with 942 providers per 100,000 residents (6,945 providers); the District of Columbia, as a dense urban district, is higher still at 989.6. Alabama has the fewest at 191.9 per 100,000. That is a 5.2× gap across the 51 jurisdictions.
Where does this data come from?
Provider counts come from the CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) full-replacement file (June 2026 snapshot), filtered to active individual providers with behavioral-health taxonomy codes. Population denominators are Census Bureau Vintage 2025 county estimates. Full inclusion rules are on the methodology page.
Can I reuse these figures and charts?
Yes. The dataset, tables, and chart images are licensed CC BY 4.0. Cite "certification.app, "US Mental Health Workforce" (June 2026 NPPES snapshot)" with a link to this page. CSV downloads and embeddable SVGs are on this page.
Why don't these counts match state licensing-board totals?
NPPES counts providers who hold an active NPI and practice in a state. It does not count licenses issued. A provider licensed in three states appears once, at their practice address; licensees without an NPI (not billing insurance) are missing; taxonomy self-designation is not license verification. Board totals count licenses, so they run higher.
How often is this dataset updated?
Annually. This is the June 2026 snapshot; the next snapshot is planned from the June 2027 NPPES file. Prior snapshots stay available so citations don't break.
Related on certification.app
For the providers behind these numbers.
certification.app tracks CE hours, renewal deadlines, and board mandates for the clinicians in this dataset, covering every state and counselors, psychologists, social workers and more.