Grab your emotional support buñuelo for this news, San Antonio. It ain’t pretty.
The past 14 months have been a mental health shitshow pretty much everywhere, but a new study names San Antonio as the fourth-worst city in the U.S. for mental health care and maintenance.
Emotional support animal advocacy site CertaPet analyzed the 50 most populous U.S. cities to find out which are “best” for mental health treatment, weighing factors such as therapy session rates by state, number of residents per mental health provider by county and total prescription charges by state.
Turns out, San Antonio isn’t alone among Texas metros near the bottom of the list. The site placed Dallas, Houston and Austin at No. 1, No. 2 and No. 9, respectively, on its list of worst places for mental health.
According to the data, Texans spend more than $23 trillion annually on prescription medication, but the state only has middling mandatory treatment laws. Further, the Lone Star State has a shameful track record of incarcerating nearly eight individuals with severe mental illness for each one it hospitalizes.
If there’s any comfort(?) here, maybe it’s that SA isn’t suffering alone.
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This article appears in Dec 1-14, 2021.