Where Support Is Thinnest: Brooklyn Neighborhoods Compared
Key finding
An estimated 37.0% of adults in Ocean Hill-Brownsville lack social and emotional support, the highest share of Brooklyn's 18 community districts and 1.6 times the 23.4% in Park Slope-Carroll Gardens, according to CDC PLACES model-based estimates for 2023. The three districts where support is thinnest also lie almost entirely inside federal mental health shortage areas for Medicaid-eligible residents.
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Key numbers
- 37.0%of adults in Ocean Hill-Brownsville (community district 16) lack social and emotional support, the highest in BrooklynCDC PLACES 2025 release, 2023 estimates, grouped by district
- 23.4%in Park Slope-Carroll Gardens (community district 6), the lowest: a gap of 13.6 percentage pointsCDC PLACES 2025 release, 2023 estimates
- 36.3%of Brooklyn adults report loneliness, and 30.5% lack social and emotional supportCDC PLACES 2025 release, Kings County, 2023
- 666,010Medicaid-eligible Brooklyn residents live in the 5 areas HRSA designates as short of mental health professionals for that populationHRSA mental health HPSA file, 11/11/2026
Lack of social and emotional support by community district
Darker districts have a higher estimated share of adults who lack social and emotional support. Hatched districts have at least half of their adults in census tracts that HRSA lists in a mental health shortage designation for Medicaid-eligible residents. Numbers on the map are community district numbers; the table below gives every value.
- under 26%
- 26 to 28.9%
- 29 to 31.9%
- 32 to 34.9%
- 35% or more
- mostly inside a Medicaid-population mental health shortage area
- park or bay, no residential data
| Community district | Lack support | Loneliness | Frequent mental distress | Depression | Adults in shortage-area tracts | Shortage designation(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ocean Hill-Brownsville (CD 16) | 37.0% | 41.4% | 19.4% | 16.9% | 100% | Bedford-Stuyvesant |
| East New York-Cypress Hills (CD 5) | 36.4% | 40.1% | 17.4% | 15.5% | 90% | East New York |
| East Flatbush (CD 17) | 36.0% | 39.8% | 16.8% | 15.2% | 93% | East Flatbush, Bedford-Stuyvesant |
| Sunset Park-Windsor Terrace (CD 7) | 33.2% | 37.6% | 15.0% | 15.1% | 0% | None |
| Bensonhurst-Bath Beach (CD 11) | 33.0% | 37.3% | 14.6% | 15.1% | 18% | Coney Island |
| Canarsie-Flatlands (CD 18) | 33.0% | 37.8% | 15.5% | 15.3% | 13% | East Flatbush |
| Crown Heights (South) (CD 9) | 32.0% | 38.2% | 16.7% | 16.9% | 100% | Bedford-Stuyvesant, East Flatbush |
| Bedford-Stuyvesant (CD 3) | 31.8% | 38.8% | 17.4% | 17.5% | 93% | Bedford-Stuyvesant, Williamsburg and Bushwick |
| Borough Park-Kensington (CD 12) | 31.5% | 37.9% | 17.2% | 18.2% | 0% | None |
| Bushwick (CD 4) | 30.6% | 38.4% | 16.7% | 17.3% | 100% | Williamsburg and Bushwick, East New York |
| Flatbush-Midwood (CD 14) | 30.4% | 36.6% | 15.4% | 16.5% | 63% | East Flatbush |
| Crown Heights (North) (CD 8) | 30.1% | 37.4% | 16.0% | 17.1% | 97% | Bedford-Stuyvesant |
| Bay Ridge-Dyker Heights (CD 10) | 28.5% | 34.7% | 13.8% | 16.0% | 0% | None |
| Coney Island-Brighton Beach (CD 13) | 28.1% | 34.4% | 14.9% | 17.0% | 93% | Coney Island |
| Sheepshead Bay-Gravesend (East) (CD 15) | 27.5% | 34.3% | 14.4% | 17.0% | 99% | Coney Island |
| Williamsburg-Greenpoint (CD 1) | 27.0% | 36.1% | 16.6% | 19.3% | 22% | Williamsburg and Bushwick |
| Downtown Brooklyn-Fort Greene (CD 2) | 25.8% | 34.3% | 13.7% | 16.7% | 18% | Bedford-Stuyvesant |
| Park Slope-Carroll Gardens (CD 6) | 23.4% | 32.0% | 13.0% | 17.1% | 0% | None |
Model-based estimates of the share of adults, from CDC PLACES (2025 release), averaged over each district's census tracts and weighted by adult population. "Adults in shortage-area tracts" is the share of the district's adults living in tracts listed in a Designated mental health HPSA for the Medicaid-eligible population (HRSA, 11/11/2026); the last column names the designation(s) covering at least 5% of the district's adults. Highlighted rows: the three highest.
| Designation (HRSA name) | Medicaid-eligible residents | HPSA score | Designated | Census tracts listed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bedford-Stuyvesant | 172,041 | 14 | 7/12/2022 | 93 |
| Coney Island | 149,417 | 15 | 6/7/2022 | 86 |
| East Flatbush | 120,399 | 12 | 7/20/2022 | 88 |
| East New York | 117,913 | 14 | 7/12/2022 | 59 |
| Williamsburg and Bushwick | 106,240 | 12 | 7/20/2022 | 53 |
HPSA = Health Professional Shortage Area. Mental health HPSA scores run from 0 to 25; a higher score means greater need. HRSA's names do not follow neighborhood lines: the "Bedford-Stuyvesant" designation, for example, also covers most of Ocean Hill-Brownsville and Crown Heights. Status "Designated" in HRSA's file dated 11/11/2026. Brooklyn also has 13 facility designations (community health centers and one correctional facility), which are not mapped here.
What this means for people looking for support in Brooklyn
- Feeling alone is common here. About one in three Brooklyn adults (36.3%) report loneliness. If that is you, you are far from the only one, and it is a reasonable thing to raise with a therapist, a doctor or someone you trust.
- Neighborhood numbers describe places, not people. These are estimates for whole districts. They say nothing about any one person, family or block, and every district on the map has people with strong support around them.
- Support can come from more than one place. Friends, family, faith and community groups and peer support all count, alongside professional care when you want it.
- If you have Medicaid and cannot find a provider, your plan has to help. Our guide to what to do when you cannot find an in-network provider in New York explains the state's wait-time rules and how to ask for a referral.
- If things feel urgent, call or text 988 at any time. In New York City it reaches NYC 988, which is free and confidential.
Method, sources and limits
CDC's PLACES project publishes model-based estimates for every U.S. census tract, built from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey and local population data. We downloaded the 2025 release (estimates for 2023) for Brooklyn's 776 tracts with data and four measures: lack of social and emotional support, loneliness, frequent mental distress (14 or more days of poor mental health in the past 30 days) and depression (ever told by a health professional).
We grouped the tracts into Brooklyn's 18 community districts using the NYC Department of City Planning's community district tabulation areas, which are built from whole tracts and closely approximate the districts. Each district value is the average of its tracts weighted by their adult population (2,140,225 adults in all). This grouping is ours; CDC does not publish community district estimates.
For the shortage overlay we took every Brooklyn mental health HPSA in HRSA's detail file with status "Designated" and type "HPSA Population" (all 5 are designations for the Medicaid-eligible population). HRSA lists their census tracts by 2010 boundaries, so we matched them to 2020 tracts with the Census Bureau's tract relationship file: a 2020 tract counts when more than half of its land lies in a listed tract.
A script computes every figure from the raw files (each checked against a SHA-256 hash), and a second script recomputes the district values and the shortage-area totals from different tables (CDC's one-row-per-tract edition of PLACES, the city's tract equivalency table and HRSA's Excel edition of the HPSA file). All checks matched on November 12, 2026.
Sources
- CDC PLACES: Local Data for Better Health, Census Tract Data, 2025 release (opens in a new tab). Model-based estimates for 2023 (BRFSS 2023).
- CDC PLACES: Local Data for Better Health, County Data, 2025 release (opens in a new tab). Kings County, 2023 estimates.
- HRSA Mental Health HPSA detail file (BCD_HPSA_FCT_DET_MH) (opens in a new tab). File dated 11/11/2026, downloaded November 12, 2026.
- NYC Department of City Planning, 2020 Census Tracts (opens in a new tab). 2020 Census geography with community district tabulation areas.
- NYC Department of City Planning, 2020 Community District Tabulation Areas (opens in a new tab). Boundaries used for the map.
- U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 to 2010 Census Tract Relationship File, New York (opens in a new tab). 2010 and 2020 Census geography.
Limits
- PLACES figures are model-based estimates, not a survey of each neighborhood. They carry uncertainty (the county-wide lack-of-support estimate is 30.5%, with a 95% range of 27.3% to 33.7%), and district averages inherit it. Small differences between districts may not be meaningful.
- Our district averages come from tract estimates and do not exactly match CDC's separate county-wide estimates. For Brooklyn as a whole we quote CDC's county figures.
- "Depression" counts adults who were ever told by a health professional that they have depression, so it also reflects who has been seen and diagnosed. It follows a different pattern from the other three measures.
- The shortage designations cover the Medicaid-eligible population only and date from 2022. A designation means HRSA counted too few mental health professionals for that population when it was made; it does not mean there are none. Facility designations (for example community health centers) are not shown on the map.
- Prospect Park and the Jamaica Bay area have no residential tracts with data and are shown in grey. The data describe adults only.
Cite this study
Mind Body Seven. (2026). Where Support Is Thinnest: Brooklyn Neighborhoods Compared. https://www.mindbody7.com/research/brooklyn-neighborhood-mental-health-map/
Journalists, researchers and community groups are welcome to quote these figures with a link to this page. The data behind the chart and tables is free to download as a CSV file (brooklyn-neighborhood-mental-health-map.csv) under the CC BY 4.0 license: reuse it with credit to Mind Body Seven and a link here. Please also credit the original sources listed above.
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This page reports public population data. It is general information, not medical advice, a diagnosis or a treatment plan, and reading it does not make you a patient of Mind Body Seven.