Access to Behavioral Health Care in Massachusetts: The Basics is a primer designed for health care providers, policymakers, advocates, and other stakeholders to increase their understanding of the behavioral health care system and the issues affecting access to care for individuals with mental and substance use disorders.

Funded by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, the primer offers a brief background on the Commonwealth’s behavioral health system. It provides a historical context for access to behavioral health care and the problems and factors affecting access to services in the state. To highlight the extent of and trends in behavioral health conditions, the primer presents data on the prevalence of mental and substance use disorders.

The report provides available data on systemic factors affecting access to care: the behavioral health workforce, system capacity, affordability of services, and consistency of measurement and reporting of data on quality.