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Data Set Review: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHDA)

About Mostly Medicaid Data Set Reviews Our data set reviews look at publicly available data sets and tools to help readers get an idea of what can be done with the data out there. Each data set is reviewed along the same elements to identify timeframes, indicators available and general source information. 

Data Set Reviewed: SAMHSA  Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHDA)

 

What you can do with this data

Run crosstabs of variables included in different surveys about drug use and health. There are dozens of variables you can explore.

To give an example, I looked at the relationship between people who had “ever smoked a cigarette” and whether they had ever used OxyContin without doctors orders. Here’s the result:

 

Sources

Public health surveys.

Overall assessment

Its a very powerful data set and the tool is easy to use. If you are looking to explore trends and relationships in the behavioral health space, I highly recommend it.