mental health in minnesota: the lines, the state's own numbers, and a page for every large city

i live in excelsior. this is the state i would want a straight page about, so here it is: who answers when it is bad, what the minnesota department of health counts and does not, how the psychiatrists here prescribe against the rest of the country, what drug companies paid them, and one page each for 42 cities so the numbers are the ones for where you actually are. every figure comes from a named state or federal file, listed at the bottom. what we could not verify today is marked on the page instead of filled in.

the cities

every city the census bureau estimated at roughly 26,000 people or more in july 2024^[7], plus mine. population in brackets.

twin cities metropolitan area, as minnesota statute defines it^[9]

• Minneapolis (428,579)
• St. Paul (307,465)
• Bloomington (88,344)
• Brooklyn Park (82,893)
• Woodbury (80,596)
• Plymouth (78,551)
• Lakeville (77,971)
• Blaine (75,172)
• Maple Grove (72,739)
• Eagan (67,240)
• Burnsville (64,864)
• Coon Rapids (63,807)
• Eden Prairie (62,905)
• Apple Valley (55,272)
• Edina (53,564)
• Minnetonka (52,651)
• St. Louis Park (49,899)
• Shakopee (48,401)
• Cottage Grove (42,760)
• Maplewood (40,142)
• Richfield (36,491)
• Inver Grove Heights (36,226)
• Roseville (35,637)
• Andover (33,426)
• Savage (32,896)
• Brooklyn Center (31,755)
• Fridley (30,679)
• Rosemount (30,581)
• Oakdale (30,441)
• Chaska (30,167)
• Ramsey (28,999)
• Prior Lake (28,018)
• Shoreview (26,939)
• Excelsior (2,296)

greater minnesota

• Rochester (123,624)
• Duluth (87,986)
• St. Cloud (72,145)
• Mankato (46,459)
• Moorhead (45,726)
• Elk River (27,606)
• Owatonna (26,626)
• Winona (26,173)

minnesota: 5,793,151 people in july 2024, up 1.5 percent on the 2020 census base^[7].

what the department of health counts

the state publishes a suicide data brief every year, and the 2025 one is preliminary^[1]. its estimate: 14.3 deaths per 100,000 people, age-adjusted, a rate about 4 percent above 2024, and 845 deaths against 818 in 2024 and the 2022 peak of 860. the long view is the harder fact: 547 deaths and a rate of 10.5 in 2005, so the rate has risen by more than a third in twenty years. males died at 23.0 per 100,000 and females at 5.8. firearms were 51 percent of deaths, suffocation 26 percent and poisoning 14 percent, and the brief says firearm injuries have been the leading mechanism for at least twenty years with a rate that has steadily increased, to 7.2 per 100,000 in 2025.

the brief's clearest geographic finding is that rurality tracks the rate. the counter-direction is in the same table, and it is worth reading both: the entirely-urban non-metro group dropped sharply in a year while the metro group rose, so the ranking of the middle groups is not settled by one year of preliminary data.

the brief also cites a 2026 jama paper for the observation that rates for ages 15 to 29 likely fell, consistent with the launch of 988; it is the department's reading of a single paper and the brief says "likely", so we repeat it at that strength and no stronger^[1].

who calls 988 in minnesota

the 988 minnesota lifeline answered 53,325 calls, texts and chats in 2023, 74 percent more than 2022, after text and chat went 24/7 in april 2023^[2]. by content: 49 percent emotional support (distress, including thoughts of suicide without a plan), 23 percent crisis support, 7 percent information, and 21 percent wrong numbers, tests and pranks. counselors wrote 11,542 safety plans and made 6,303 referrals. about 6 percent of calls were handed to a mobile crisis team and about 2 percent to emergency services. among callers who gave an age, the largest group was 25 to 44. the four call centers are Carver County Health and Human Services, First Call for Help, Greater Twin Cities United Way, FirstLink. the practical point is that roughly nine in ten calls end without anyone being sent anywhere, which is the reason to call earlier than you think you should.

how minnesota psychiatrists prescribe

in the 2024 medicare part d file, 532 minnesota psychiatrists with eleven or more medicare patients saw 49,591 patients and wrote 15.1 prescriptions per patient, against 14.0 for the 31,123 psychiatrists nationally; drug cost per patient was $1,893 here and $1,757 nationally^[6]. the areas differ more than the state does from the nation, which is why each city page carries its own ZIP-area table. the areas the city pages cover:

medicare part d only, 2024, prescribers with eleven or more medicare patients, patient-weighted. not adjusted for how sick the patients are: an area with a large hospital catchment can run high for that reason alone.

where minnesota's psychiatrists have their offices

the same federal file gives each prescriber a practice address. 718 psychiatric prescribers list one in minnesota, 532 of them with eleven or more medicare patients^[6]. grouped by the ZIP codes that belong to each city on this page, the offices sit in a handful of places, and most of the cities on this list have none at all, which is a fact about where offices are rather than about who gets seen.

cities on this page with no prescriber address in their ZIP codes: Apple Valley, Cottage Grove, Andover, Savage, Brooklyn Center, Rosemount, Chaska, Prior Lake, Elk River, Shoreview, Winona, Excelsior. patients and rates are shown only where five or more prescribers are counted, so no one doctor's prescribing can be read off the table.

what drug companies paid minnesota psychiatrists

the box is pre-filled with a minneapolis ZIP. press the button and your browser reads the 2024 federal open payments file for every psychiatrist in that area: who paid, for which products, and what they prescribed to medicare patients the same year. the city pages pre-fill their own ZIP. the payments are legal and most are meals; the explanation is on the ZIP lookup page.

winter

the national institute of mental health says seasonal affective disorder is more common farther north, where winter days are shorter, that winter-pattern symptoms usually begin in late fall and last about four to five months, and that it is not the same thing as holiday stress because it tracks daylight, not the calendar^[8]. nimh names four treatment categories: light therapy, psychotherapy, antidepressant medication and vitamin d. both directions of the comparison it cites: cbt adapted for sad and light therapy were equally effective, some symptoms improved slightly faster with light, and the cbt effect lasted longer across two winters. few studies have tested prevention. no source we read gives a minnesota prevalence figure, so none is stated here, and nothing on this page is advice to start, stop or change a treatment.

what is not on these pages yet

• the county crisis phone numbers themselves. the dhs pages that hold them returned a bot-check page to every request on 2026-09-24; the links are there and a browser gets through.
• therapist and clinic lists. we hold no checked list for any minnesota city and will not print one we have not checked.
• medical assistance and minnesotacare income limits, for the same bot-check reason.
• county-level suicide counts. the state brief reports by urbanization group, not by county.

paying for care: medical assistance and minnesotacare are at mn.gov/dhs (income limits not quoted: same bot check, 2026-09-24). the sliding-scale checker and therapy cost calculator work anywhere.

the other 166 hours in minnesota

the lines above are for the worst hour. veisund is for the rest of the week in minnesota: post what is going on under a handle you pick, and people who have been through it answer. free, no ads, not a crisis service, not therapy.

questions people ask

sources

1. Minnesota Department of Health. Data Brief: Suicide Rate up 4% in 2025 (preliminary data). Read 2026-09-24. https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/suicide/documents/2025suicidedatabrief.pdf
2. Minnesota Department of Health. Minnesota 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 2023 Summary. Read 2026-09-24. https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/suicide/documents/lifelinesum23.pdf
3. Minnesota Department of Health. Suicide Prevention: Help in a Crisis. Read 2026-09-24. https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/suicide/basics/gethelp.html
4. Minnesota Department of Human Services. Adult mental health crisis response phone numbers. Linked from source 3; not readable by our tools on 2026-09-24 (bot check). https://mn.gov/dhs/people-we-serve/adults/health-care/mental-health/resources/crisis-contacts.jsp
5. Minnesota Department of Human Services. Children's mental health crisis response phone numbers. Linked from source 3; not readable by our tools on 2026-09-24 (bot check). https://mn.gov/dhs/people-we-serve/children-and-families/health-care/mental-health/resources/crisis-contacts.jsp
6. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Medicare Part D Prescribers by Provider, data year 2024; psychiatry specialties, prescribers with eleven or more beneficiaries, aggregated by state and ZIP3 in scripts/partd-psychiatry-benchmarks.mjs. https://data.cms.gov/provider-summary-by-type-of-service/medicare-part-d-prescribers/medicare-part-d-prescribers-by-provider
7. U.S. Census Bureau. Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places in Minnesota: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2024 (SUB-EST2024). Read 2026-09-24. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/datasets/2020-2024/cities/totals/sub-est2024_27.csv
8. National Institute of Mental Health. Seasonal Affective Disorder (NIH Publication No. 23-MH-8138). Read 2026-09-24. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/seasonal-affective-disorder
9. Minnesota Statutes 473.121, subd. 2: definition of the metropolitan area. Read 2026-09-24. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/473.121

related: drug company payments to psychiatrists near you · more treatment, same suicide rate · free anonymous mental health support in minneapolis

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