Advance Letter

Attachment A.4 (N-MHSS-Locator Advance Letter)

August 2012

Dear Facility Director:

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will soon be conducting the National Survey of Mental Health Services Survey (N-MHSS) – Locator Survey. This survey will collect data from all known mental health treatment facilities in the nation. These data include information about facility characteristics including the type of facility; ownership; service settings, specialty services and specially-designed programs offered; as well as basic contact information.

Your participation is needed to ensure that current information about your facility will be available to mental health consumers, family members and mental health professionals in search of needed treatment services in the local community. These data will be used to update existing facility information found on SAMHSA’s online Mental Health Facility Locator at http://store.samhsa.gov/mhlocator, add new mental health facilities to this Locator, and for publication in SAMHSA’s National Directory of Mental Health Treatment Facilities. Facilities that participate in the upcoming N-MHSS–Locator survey can choose to be listed in both the online Locator and the 2012 Directory. Results of the N-MHSS-Locator will also provide counts on the number and types of public mental health treatment facilities, nationwide, that will be useful to the states for program planning purposes and to the behavioral health research community.

In a few weeks, you will receive a N-MHSS–Locator survey packet from Mathematica Policy Research, Princeton, NJ. The packet will include instructions for completing the questionnaire on the Internet through a secure password protected and dedicated survey website.

If for any reason you cannot complete the N-MHSS–Locator survey on the Internet, you will also be given an opportunity to complete the survey by telephone. Thank you for your cooperation and we look forward to your participation in this important national data collection effort.

Sincerely,

H. Westley Clark, MD, JD, MPH

Director,

Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and

Quality