Made by Ajay Misra for GillingsX 2025
Youth Mental Health Disparities
Demographic & Gender Variations in Mental Health
Youth Mental Health Disparities Explorer
This interactive data visualization tool provides a comprehensive analysis of youth mental health disparities across diverse demographic groups. By integrating data from multiple national surveys and peer-reviewed research, the tool offers insights into both the prevalence of mental health conditions and access to care barriers that different populations face.
Most of the data used to build this tool is available open source (+ cleaned and annotated) at https://ajaymisra.com/files/gillings-data.zip. We encourage you to use this to train your own models, visualizers, informational tools, or use as you see fit. We synthesized the data from multiple sources (via a combination of in-house AI scrapers and manual curation) to create a comprehensive dataset.
Our tool is designed to help researchers, healthcare providers, policymakers, and advocates identify significant disparities in mental health reporting and treatment access. The data reveals critical patterns in how mental health conditions manifest differently across gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, geographic location, and socioeconomic status.
Data Methodology Note:
All visualizations display self-reported data from longitudinal surveys and may differ from clinical prevalence due to reporting biases, cultural factors, and diagnostic access disparities. For demographic intersections where direct statistics were unavailable, values were synthesized from related research while maintaining proportional relationships consistent with primary sources.
Key Insights
Our analysis reveals several crucial patterns that warrant attention from healthcare providers and policymakers:
- Demographic Disparities: Youth mental health conditions and access to care vary significantly across different demographic groups, with some populations experiencing disproportionate challenges.
- Geographic Divide: With 68.5% of rural populations reporting no local provider access compared to 17.8% in urban areas, location creates critical gaps in care availability that require innovative solutions.
- Economic Factors: Strong socioeconomic correlations exist in both condition prevalence and healthcare access—low-income youth report the highest affordability challenges (74.6%) and significantly higher rates of depression (22%) than high-income peers (15%).
- Technological Opportunities: Emerging technologies, including AI-assisted tools, offer promising avenues to supplement traditional care models and extend mental health resources to underserved regions.
* The term "reported prevalence" is used instead of "actual prevalence" to acknowledge that these statistics reflect self-reported data, which may underestimate actual prevalence particularly in demographics where mental health stigma is higher or access to healthcare is limited.
How to Use This Explorer
Navigate between different views to explore various aspects of mental health disparities:
Access & Support
Explore healthcare access metrics and barriers different groups face, including provider availability, cost barriers, stigma concerns, and utilization of different support services.
Prevalence
Examine rates of different mental health conditions across demographic groups, including depression, anxiety, and suicide. Compare how prevalence varies by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.
Global Resources
Explore the distribution of mental health resources globally and how innovative approaches, including technology-assisted tools, can help address service gaps. This section highlights opportunities to improve mental health support in underserved regions.
Data Interpretation
The vertical dashed line represents the national median for each metric, helping identify groups with above or below average experiences. The National Median value is calculated as the middle value across all demographic groups.
Bibliography & Data Sources
Primary Data Sources
- CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) 2021-2023: National statistics on adolescent mental health including suicidal behaviors
- SAMHSA National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2022: Comprehensive mental health data for ages 12-25
- The Healthy Minds Study (HMS) 2022-2023: College student mental health across multiple institutions
- Kaiser Family Foundation Mental Health Survey 2022: Gender-specific analysis of youth mental health conditions
- Rochester Asian American Organization LLC's National Mental Health Database: rochaao.org/providers - Geographic and demographic analysis of mental health service availability
Key Academic References
- Patel, V., et al. (2022). The global mental health agenda: Challenges and opportunities. World Psychiatry, 21(3), 392-401.
- Goldbach, J.T., et al. (2021). Mental health disparities among youth: Current knowledge and future directions. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 50(4), 531-547.
- Naslund, J.A., et al. (2022). Digital technologies for mental health: A new paradigm for global mental health care. The Lancet Psychiatry, 9(4), 340-350.
- Ruch, D.A., et al. (2021). Trends in suicide among youth aged 10 to 19 years in the United States, 1975 to 2016. JAMA Network Open, 4(4).
- AlegrĂa, M., et al. (2020). Social and structural determinants of mental health: Overview and implications for policy and research. American Journal of Psychiatry, 177(2), 113-121.
This visualization integrates over 200 unique data points derived from these authoritative sources. For additional information on our data methodology, please contact Ajay Misra (ajaym1@unc.edu).