1 In 5 U.S. Adults Had Mental Illness Last Year: Report

One in five American adults has experienced mental illness in the last year, according to a new government report, with mental illness being more than twice as high among younger adults (ages 18 to 25) than older adults (age 50 and older).

The report, conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), showed that 29.9 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds experienced mental illness in the last year, compared with 14.3 percent of people age 50 and older.

In addition, women were more likely to have experienced mental illness than men in the last year, with 23 percent of women reporting mental illness compared with 16.8 percent of men.

SAMHSA defined mental illness as having diagnosable disorder that is based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV).

"Mental illness is a significant public health problem in itself, but also because it is associated with chronic medical diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer, as well as several risk behaviors including physical inactivity, smoking, excessive drinking, and insufficient sleep," Ileana Arias, Ph.D., principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement.

The report shows that more efforts are needed to monitor mental illness in order to have effective prevention, Arias added.

About four in 10 people (39.2 percent) received services to help them with their mental illness, and 60.8 percent of people with a serious mental illness received services, the report said.

Researchers gained some insight into suicide and thoughts of suicide through the report. They found that about 8.7 million Americans contemplated suicide in the last year, while 2.5 million people actually made plans to commit suicide and 1.1 million people attempted suicide.

In addition, 8 percent of teens between ages 12 and 17 reported that they had had a major depressive episode over the last year, according to the report.

For the full results, click here.

Last year, a study in the Archives of General Psychiatry showed that the United States has the highest bipolar disorder rate in an 11-nation study, Health.com reported. The lifetime rate for bipolar disorder in the U.S. was 4.4 percent in that study, compared with India's lowest rate of 0.1 percent.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Comments

[Eugen Sandow]

04:33 PM on 02/25/2013

The article uses the past tense to refer to those having mental illness. This means they are talking about a temporary or short term mental illness as one would expect from someone grieving the loss of a family member. Human beings could not have evolved into a viable species, able to live together in civilizations, if 20% of them were mentally ill.

This article refers to the intentional mislabeling of huge swaths of the citizenry as mentally ill in an attempt to rob them of their constitutional rights, specifically and foremost, their right to keep and bear arms. ALL tyrannical governments disarm their citizenry as they transition into a police state. This is why people are being labelled mentally ill, including US military veterans.

[Kenneth Lapointe]

05:57 AM on 06/19/2012

Not only are the statistics lies but anyone who commented about the 'actual biological brain diseases' are lies too. There is NO proof whatsoever of any psychiatric 'mental disorder' (schizophrenia, bipolar, etc) as having a biological cause in a brain. Anyone who can provide any such statement of proof by any neuroscientist or psychiatrist or neurologist please do so, but there aren't any because it doesn't exist. Simply speculation, subjective opinion, maybes, may, possibly, seems to indicate, appears to, theories.
The chattering of the parrots of psychiatry.

[June Conway Beeby]

11:06 AM on 02/03/2012

LIES, DAMNED LIES AND STATISTICS

This is akin to counting the number of apples by including seeds, skin, cores,stems, et al , as if they were whole apples, then adding all this up and expecting us to believe that this is trustworthy information.

Chronic serious biological brain diseases like schizophrenia,manic depression and related psychoses cannot be subsumed in mental illness numbers, which include much less serious mental disorders (which some insist are not illnesses).

It boggles the mind that you expect us to accept these statistics. But even more worrisome is the fear that governments might believe these figures are meaningful and mix funding and planning decisons for the seriously mentally ill in the same pot as less serious, less disabling conditions.

[Rockjock88]

02:13 PM on 01/28/2012

The numbers are ABSOLUTELY inaccurate. You cannot conduct a study of less than 70,000 people (of which not all participated and they estimated (forged) the results for the non-participants) and then unequivocally tell us that 1.1 million people actually tried to commit suicide. Total BS. It's called a culture of fear and "they" the ever elusive "they" want us to be scared of one another. 1 in 5? Really? ABSOLUTE BS.

[DJ Jaffe]

06:42 PM on 01/24/2012

The numbers are innacurate in that they excluded the incarcerated, institutionalized and homeless http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dj-jaffe/samhsa-statistics-ignore-_b_1222144.html

[Charles Valenta]

12:25 AM on 01/24/2012

From the Discussion section of the report

Among adults, prevalance of Any Mental Illness(AMI) was 20 percent [45.9 million adults] and the prevalence of Serious Mental Illness(SMI) was 5.0 percent.

The correlation between severity of mental illness and the receipt of treatments provides evidence that treatment is being provided to those needing it most.

The results also indicate that among the 45.9 million adults with mental illness more than 60 percent of them did not receive mental health treatment in the past year. According to the report, approximately 40 percent of the 11.4 million adults with SMI did not receive services in the past year.

5.2 million adults self reported an unmet need for mental health treatment and did not receive treatment int he past year. The most common reason for not receiving treatment among these adults was the inability the cost of mental health care (43.7 Percent).

I feel these figures from the report should have been reported in this story.

[mmcki43802]

04:01 PM on 01/23/2012

This article explains just about everything that I have wondered about the people in my workplace.
One in five. It may be more than that. Many are undiagnosed.

[yurday6]

12:00 PM on 01/23/2012

For every little thing that goes wrong in life the physciatrist are writing prescriptions left and right. Oh your depressed, here take this pill. Oh your sad, take this pill. Oh, you can't sleep, take this pill. Oh your too tired, take this pill. Oh you can't concentrate, take this pill, and so on. The drug company's and doctors are creating mentally ill people.

[BAHAMABOY113]

08:51 AM on 01/22/2012

Good day , the article is about mental illness not dems or repubs ...I don,t understand why people get so worked up and attack one another over thier political choices . My mother suffered from depression and i do too,to a lesser degree. The new medications and a competant caring doctor have been a true blessing for my family . I think that people who attack people verbally or in writing need to think about where this anger and the need for hyperbole comes from. Have a great day and let those you love know it !!!!!!!!!!

[kitsmom1990]

12:30 AM on 01/22/2012

I'm not sure if this is the result of our need to turn behavioral variations into pathology or this study has tapped into something unique about the American psyche. Serious mental illnesses that have definited neurological and biochemical causes like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive illness definitely need medical intervention and treatment. They can be life threatening and severely psychosocially limiting. I wonder however if our diagnostic criteria for even the most ligitimate of psychiatric diagnoses needs to be tightened up. Perhaps the DSM IV criteria is being applied a little bit too loosely.

[hpbish]

09:31 AM on 12/24/2012

It'n not American, it's barely human.
Inflicted upon us by the same tribe who gifted us with communism, Bolshevism and compound interest. (among other things)

[realitycheck101a]

02:39 PM on 01/21/2012

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

Jiddu Krishnamurti

[Norge]

11:10 AM on 01/21/2012

Well, you were not promised a rose garden and besides a forest and mountain walk can be more rewarding and refreshing with a fine view.

[g9]

02:27 AM on 01/20/2012

On stage tonight it was 4 out of 5 ..(MC included )

[charon]

02:19 AM on 01/20/2012

Be a good little brick and take your place in the wall, and we will call you normal. The wall that imprisons our minds and souls.

[Jim Biggs]

02:00 AM on 01/20/2012

1 in 5

kinda correlates with the percentage of the public that claim to be li.be.ral

not surprised