Mental health benchmarks in the United States: An unheeded call to action

Despite longstanding calls for standardized benchmarks in U.S. outpatient mental health care, none are widely adopted, limiting the ability to evaluate outcomes, compare providers, and advance measurement-based care (MBC). Benchmarks-defined as expected outcome distributions adjusted for diagnosis, severity, and treatment dose-would make care quality observable and actionable. Their absence reflects systemic barriers, including fragmented leadership, misaligned incentives, and limited adoption of routine outcomes monitoring, rather than technical constraints. This gap obscures variability in outcomes, weakens quality improvement efforts, and hinders enforcement of mental health parity. Drawing on field experience and international comparisons, this paper argues that benchmarking must be treated as public infrastructure, supported by federal leadership, aligned incentives, and safe data-sharing frameworks. Establishing national benchmarks is essential to improving transparency, accountability, and equity in outpatient mental health care. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).