CDC Statistics: Mental Illness in the US, Closer than You Think

[littlemissmartypants]

The report notes that according to the World Health Organization, mental illness — that is, any mental disorder — accounts for more disability in developed countries than any other group of illnesses, including cancer and heart disease. Yet all we hear people talk about in the media time and time again is reducing your risk of these health problems. We rarely hear anyone talk about reducing your risk of anxiety or depression.

According to a rigorous health survey conducted by the CDC in 2004, an estimated 25 percent of adults in the U.S. reported having a mental illness in the previous year. Lifetime prevalence rates of mental illness in the U.S. were around 50 percent when measured back in 2004. That means in a family of four, one of you likely has a mental illness.

The CDC is just figuring out what psychologists could’ve told them 20 or 30 years ago — that health problems are readily impacted by co-morbid mental health problems. The two are inextricably linked:

Increasingly, physicians and others who treat mental illness, as well as public health experts, are recognizing the substantial overlap between mental illness and diseases traditionally considered to be matters of public health concern. The ability of certain mental illnesses to exacerbate morbidity from several chronic diseases is well-established. Recent studies have explored the causal pathways from mental illness to certain chronic diseases, highlighting the need for more accurate and timely information on the epidemiology of mental illness in the United States.

This co-morbidity is a two-way street, too. Every time you see someone in a hospital bed being treated for one of those major health diseases you hear about in the news — such as heart disease or cancer — keep in mind that person also has mental health concerns. Most of the time, those mental health concerns — even it’s just anxiety related to the actual treatment or chances of recovery from the disease — are often overlooked altogether, or treated as minor, almost unrelated issues.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/09/03/cdc-statistics-mental-illness-in-the-us/


Full CDC report here: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6003a1.htm?s_cid=su6003a1_w

[iemitsu]

1. This is an interesting article but (IMO) uses a too broad a definition of mental

illness to accept the statical conclusions.
It seems, the author categorizes any unhappy state to be evidence of mental illness. Sure, when we are tired or stressed out we are more prone to contracting colds or the flu, this makes sense, but is this situation really to be defined as mental illness?
I believe that depression, guilt, stress, anxiety and other unhappy conditions, unless chronic and debilitating, are normal and healthy aspects of our beings and without these experiences we would not know exhilaration and ecstasy. If we felt good all the time we would soon forget that the feeling was good, it would just be normal. We need to feel both good and bad to experience life.
Sometimes people are depressed or anxious because of things they said or did to others. They deserve to feel that way, it is healthy not a mental illness.
Perhaps I protest too loudly in defense of my own state of existence but I think the author stretches the limits of whom he considers ill to encourage more people to seek the high-cost services of those in his profession.

[littlemissmartypants]

2. I can understand your point of view but it also

appears by definition of the medical community even small stressors can influence perception and judgement. Did you look at the CDC report?

[Posteritatis]

3. Why is the figure so astonishing?

Would it be equally astonishing if one in four people reported feeling physically ill in the last year?

"Chronic and debilitating" conditions are more common than you seem to think, and you're dancing all over the "depression and similar things are a personal failure" meme pretty hard there.