Ensuring that Indiana communities have the capacity to meet the increasing need for substance use disorder services is of critical importance to health care systems, professional training programs, and community organizations. Therefore, this report aims to understand the substance use disorder workforce capacity in Indiana and its relation to ED utilization for substance use services.
The substance abuse workforce is a subset of the larger mental health workforce and includes only those professionals who are involved in the treatment of substance abuse issues. This report identifies major trends and includes key data on the substance abuse workforce that may be used to promote meaningful policy discussion and inform evidence-based policy development. Understanding the status of Indiana’s substance abuse workforce is critical to ensuring that Indiana residents have access to high quality care, to developing programs that will train practitioners to meet future needs, and to recruiting and retaining healthcare professionals in Indiana.
Assuring that mental health services are available and accessible for all Hoosiers that need them is important to reduce related morbidity and mortality and improve mental health. At the community-level, the availability of mental health services is largely based upon the supply and distribution of the workforce that delivers mental health services. Indiana’s licensed mental health workforce is comprised of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, and a number of mental health professionals. A number of important issues emerge from recent data on the supply and distribution of this workforce. These issues, described throughout the document and outlined below, have been organized for the purpose of informing the agenda for mental health workforce policy in the State of Indiana. These issues emerged in objective consideration of workforce data and do not take into account perspectives of any one profession or stakeholder group.
The 2010 Indiana Mental Health Professionals Re-Licensure Survey, the 2010 Clinical Psychologists Re-Licensure Survey, and the 2011 Physician Re-Licensure Survey were administered by the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency under a contract with the Indiana State Department of Health. The 2011 Psychiatric Advanced Practice Nurse Survey was administered by the Indiana Nursing Association. This report summarizes the responses to these four surveys. The purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive description of the mental health workforce in Indiana.