{"id":15537,"date":"2025-10-21T12:06:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T19:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15537"},"modified":"2025-10-21T12:06:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T19:06:16","slug":"oregon-has-the-highest-rate-of-mental-illness-in-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15537","title":{"rendered":"Oregon has the highest rate of mental illness in the country"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The study ranks Oregonians, youth and adults, as having the highest prevalence of mental health challenges among residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.<\/p>\n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/mhanational.org\/the-state-of-mental-health-in-america\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mental Health America\u2019s newly released 2025 annual report<\/a>. <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite complete Democratic party control for over 30 years and spending hundreds of millions of dollars  a year &#8211; the <a href=\"https:\/\/mhanational.org\/the-state-of-mental-health-in-america\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mhanational.org\/the-state-of-mental-health-in-america\/\">latest annual report on mental health<\/a> shows Oregonians have the highest rates of mental health issues in the country. Rates have increased every year for the last 5 years and Oregon has been above national averages since 2015. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How many Oregonians suffer from mental illness? 30% of the adult population.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"463\" data-attachment-id=\"15538\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?attachment_id=15538\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2025\/10\/ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM.jpg?fit=1440%2C1042&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1440,1042\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2025\/10\/ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM.jpg?fit=640%2C463&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2025\/10\/ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM.jpg?resize=640%2C463&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15538\" style=\"width:547px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2025\/10\/ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM.jpg?resize=1024%2C741&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2025\/10\/ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM.jpg?resize=300%2C217&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2025\/10\/ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM.jpg?resize=768%2C556&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2025\/10\/ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM.jpg?resize=373%2C270&amp;ssl=1 373w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2025\/10\/ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM.jpg?w=1440&amp;ssl=1 1440w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2025\/10\/ACMLI2CHZNAAREQKY74ULOEYWM.jpg?w=1280&amp;ssl=1 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wweek.com\/news\/state\/2025\/10\/21\/hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-later-oregonians-disproportionately-suffer-from-mental-illness\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.wweek.com\/news\/state\/2025\/10\/21\/hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-later-oregonians-disproportionately-suffer-from-mental-illness\/\">There&#8217;s lots of finger pointing<\/a>. Many blame normalizing homelessness and living on the streets for people  who often struggle with addictions and mental health issues. Others point at attempts to normalize mental health issues and neurodivergence as simply &#8216;lifestyle choices&#8217;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No matter how you look at it, the decades of policies we have today are clearly failing &#8211; and failing worse than anywhere else in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The study ranks Oregonians, youth and adults, as having the highest prevalence of mental health challenges among residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Mental Health America\u2019s newly released 2025 annual report. Despite complete Democratic party control for over 30 years and spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year &#8211; the latest annual report on mental health shows Oregonians have the highest rates of mental health issues in the country. Rates have increased every year for&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15537\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-local-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-42B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15539,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15537\/revisions\/15539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}