{"id":456499,"date":"2026-10-04T22:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T22:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/456499\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T22:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T22:44:08","slug":"san-antonio-ranks-low-for-mental-health-care-access-study-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/456499\/","title":{"rendered":"San Antonio ranks low for mental health care access, study says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The study, done by autism therapy company Autism 360<\/a>, analyzed 2025 data from the federal agency Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the U.S. Census Bureau to rank U.S.\u00a0states, counties and major metro areas based on the distance residents must travel to reach a registered mental health care facility and the number of facilities per 100,000 residents.<\/p>\n

The company says the data may not include individual caregivers in independent private practices.<\/p>\n

It found that San Antonio, grouped with New Braunfels, tied with South Carolina\u2019s Greenville-Anderson-Greer area\u00a0for the worst access to mental health treatment options nationally. With just one facility per 100,000 residents,\u00a0San Antonians must travel more than seven miles to reach the nearest in-person care, compared to the average travel distance of five miles for 43\u00a0cities nationwide.<\/p>\n

Texas scored the third lowest for access to mental health care<\/a>, behind only Alabama and Hawaii \u2014 which tied for the worst \u2014 and South Carolina. Texas has less than a third of the number of registered mental health facilities based on population as the average U.S. state and the District of Colombia, with 1.4 clinics per 100,000 residents. The national average was 4.1 clinics.<\/p>\n

Even Austin, which scored the best among Texas cities, was ranked the eighth worst nationwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bexar County slotted in below 85.3% of almost 1,000 counties reviewed nationally. Bexar County residents must travel an average of 5.5 miles to the nearest mental health facility, of which there are 19.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The study also highlights the challenges faced by residents of rural areas: People living in rural environments have to travel more than four times the distance of those who live in large cities.<\/p>\n

Access to mental care hinges on more than just the number of options and their proximity, including the cost and type of care available, Autism 360 CEO and co-founder Ash Bhattacharya said in a news release. Still, more than 10% of people with severe mental distress have reported delaying seeking help because a clinic was not open when they arrived or because they had no way to get there, he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile not every mental health access point is recorded by\u00a0SAMHSA\u2019s survey, a low facility supply does indicate that intensive mental healthcare and treatment might be harder to come by in San Antonio than in other areas of the country,\u201d Bhattacharya said.<\/p>\n

Taking the crown for the country\u2019s best access to mental health facilities was Salt Lake City, Utah, with an average travel distance of 1.8 miles to services and 12 facilities per 100,000 residents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The study, done by autism therapy company Autism 360, analyzed 2025 data from the federal agency Substance Abuse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-456499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}