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Wellness Beyond Self Care: Exploring What Care Looks Like in the Mid South

Every August, National Wellness Month asks people to drink more water, sleep better, and build in a few minutes to breathe. It’s good practice, but for a lot of people in the Mid South, creating a routine that considers self care runs deeper. 

Self-care advice assumes a baseline: a provider to call, an appointment that doesn’t require a half-day off work, and a two-hours of commute time, full coverage insurance. Across much of the Mid South, that baseline doesn’t always hold for most residents. And the region’s mental health data tells a more complicated story than the narrative that tends to circulate. Each story across the Mid South isn’t linear, but they are urgent at all the same. 

THE NUMBERS TELL A STORY 

CDC-sourced survey data compiled by America’s Health Rankings show Arkansas and Louisiana ranked 49th and 48th in the nation for frequent mental distress, at roughly 19.9% and 19.8% of adults. Mississippi, by contrast, ranks 7th-best in the country on that same measure, at 13.5%. Three neighboring states, three very different pictures of how residents describe their own day-to-day mental health. 

The number of psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and other licensed mental health professionals per 100,000 residents, tracked by CMS and compiled by America’s Health Rankings, gives us the clearest comparison in provider density. The national rate is 362.6 per 100,000. Louisiana comes closest to that mark at 344.8. Arkansas trails at 299.7. Mississippi has the fewest of the three, at 251.0, which is the 40th in the country. 

Put those two data points together, and the story gets more interesting. Arkansas shows both higher distress and a wider access gap—the toughest combination of the three. Louisiana’s access roughly tracks the national picture, but distress is still near the bottom nationally. Mississippi reports less frequent distress and comparatively more of its needs met, yet still trails badly on nearly every other regional health indicator. 

What this data tells us is that the Mid South needs state-specific solutions and a more nuanced look at policy and strategic solutions.  

STORIES FROM THE REGION 

Two recent webinars, approaching the issue from different angles, gave insight into the same underlying gap. 

During the Foundation’s The Weight We Carry webinar in March, mental health clinician Dr. Damien Thomas walked through how chronic stress physically reshapes the body, disrupting hormones and reward pathways in ways that show up as emotional eating, anxiety, and depression. For many Mississippians, he explained, stress isn’t occasional. It’s a constant economic strain, caregiving demands, violence exposure, and generational trauma. The conversation reframed the state’s obesity numbers as inseparable from its mental health picture, and both as inseparable from the systems people live inside. 

Public health leader Astria Goolsby, also on that panel, pointed to what stands between people and the care Dr. Thomas described: rural access gaps, food insecurity, and environments that make consistent physical activity difficult to sustain. Her fix was community health workers and better-resourced social service departments. Things are solutions that people already have embedded in these communities who can spot a problem before it becomes a crisis. 

That same webinar surfaced a line from maternal health advocate Whitney Hunter-Batteast that has stuck with Foundation’s audience since: “We stop thinking about moms after birth unless they are having a mental health crisis.” In a later feature, Beyond Delivery, she described a maternal health system built around a single six-week checkup, even though postpartum depression, anxiety, and hypertensive complications routinely surface well after that window closes—and well after many mothers’ insurance coverage has expired. Her answer wasn’t only clinical. She’s begun developing what she calls “villager cards,” simple guides that help friends, relatives, and churches recognize postpartum warning signs themselves, because, as she put it, “everything doesn’t have to happen inside a medical setting.” 

Two conversations, two different entry points, one recurring gap: mental health support that shows up too late, and often only after a crisis has already started. 

ACCESS IS THE FOUNDATION’S DEFINITION OF WELLNESS 

That gap is exactly what the Foundation’s current strategic plan is built to close. Among the Foundation’s Health and Wellness priorities is a specific commitment to increase access to mental health services in underserved communities across Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi by 25% by 2030 through funding telehealth initiatives that reach rural populations, supporting training pipelines for mental health professionals, and partnering with schools to build screening and support directly into the places young people already spend their days. 

WHERE THIS GOES FROM HERE 

National Wellness Month will wrap up in a matter of days, but the gaps described above will not.  

Here’s one main takeaway worth highlighting: wellness in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi isn’t one story, and it won’t be solved with one solution. It will take rural telehealth in Arkansas, sustained investment in Louisiana’s provider pipeline, and continued attention to why Mississippi’s better access numbers still haven’t translated into better outcomes elsewhere. 

Explore the conversations behind this piece: 

  • Watch the full replay of The Weight We Carry 
  • Read Beyond Delivery: The Long Road Home for Mississippi Mothers 
  • Learn more about the Foundation’s Healthy Opportunities priority 

 

 

Sources: 

  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (Sept. 2025), compiled via America’s Health Rankings: Mental Health Providers