Status of the Behavioral Health Workforce
At the end of 2025, the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis released one of the clearest snapshots we have of the U.S. behavioral health workforce and where it is heading. For anyone building or expanding behavioral health services, it is worth reading directly.
Read the full workforce brief here:
👉 Behavioral Health Workforce Brief (Dec 2025)
A few high-level takeaways from the report:
Projected shortages continue across nearly every behavioral health discipline, including psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers.
Nearly 40% of the U.S. population lives in a mental health workforce shortage area.
Workforce distribution remains uneven, with rural and high-need areas facing the greatest access gaps.
Reimbursement constraints, cost of care, scope-of-practice limitations, burnout, and turnover continue to shape workforce capacity.
The bottom line is straightforward. Demand for behavioral health services is rising across age groups and care settings, while the workforce pipeline, reimbursement environment, and operational realities continue to limit access and sustainability. For organizations trying to build or stabilize services, this report offers a grounded view of where things actually stand.
Where CultivateCare Helps
As the workforce data above makes clear, the challenge is not only supply. It is execution. Organizations are trying to expand access, integrate behavioral health into medical settings, and stabilize teams inside hiring markets and reimbursement structures that make this difficult to sustain.
CultivateCare exists to help organizations navigate these barriers. We support medical groups, health systems, and behavioral health practices with behavioral health recruitment and workforce strategy, along with practice consulting focused on sustainable workflows, staffing models, and integration design. Whether the need is hiring clinicians who can function in integrated environments or building operational structures that retain them, our work is centered on making behavioral health programs viable in the real world.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute clinical, legal, or regulatory guidance. CultivateCare is an independent consulting and recruiting partner and does not represent any federal agency or workforce authority.