Mental illness prevalence

Warner, R., Taylor, D., Wright, J., Sloat, A., Springett, G., Arnold, S., and Weinberg, H. (1994) Substance use among the mentally ill prevalence, reasons for use, and effects on illness. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 64 30-39. 

Kety, S.S. Rosenthal, D. Wender, P.H. and Schulsinger, F. The types and prevalence of mental illness in the biological and adoptive families of adoptive schizophrenics. In Rosenthal,... 

US National Institute of Mental Health, anxiety (in particular generalized anxiety disorder or GAD) and depression are the most prevalent mental illnesses. In the United States alone, an estimated 4 million adults suffer from GAD and nearly 19 million adults are affected by depressive disorders. As GAD and depression are often present together, most patients suffering from these disorders are treated with the same drugs [1]. 

A variety of kinds of evidence have linked emotional behavior to hormones. Two conditions, the menstrual cycle and menopause, have been the focus of a great deal of research on human behavior. In addition, gender differences in the prevalence of mental illnesses have been used as indirect evidence for possible hormonal effects on emotional disorders. For example, depression is more common in women than in men. In contrast, a pubertal onset of schizophrenia is more common in males than females (Hafner, et al., 1993), although the lifetime occurrence of schizophrenia is approximately equal in men and women (Seeman, 1996). Effects of hormones on emotional lability in men are described above in the context of aggression. 

Psychiatric treatment of new illnesses has accelerated since the 1980s. Whereas psychiatry traditionally had been dominated by a psychodynamic perspective on illness, the field has turned its back on that tradition in favor of predominantly biological definitions of mental illness. Critics of this shift focus their attention on the social factors that have led psychiatrists to the prescription pad. One can only express wonderment at the discovery of so many new brain diseases since 1980. The bible of psychiatric diagnoses, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has now been revised three times since 1953, most recently in 1994. The first two editions classified illnesses in accordance with the psychodynamic model prevalent at the time. Conditions warranting psychiatric treatment were understood as disorders of the mind. Then, in the 1980s, the language of psychotherapeutic disorder abruptly disappeared and was replaced by... 

Table 17.1. In this context, mental retardation deserves special comment. Although most persons with mental retardation are not violent, there is an increased risk of inappropriate aggression among individuals with psychiatric diagnoses in general, including mental retardation. Most research on associations between violence and mental illness has focused on adults. To assess the relationship between aggressive behaviors and psychiatric disorders, it is useful to look at the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in those who have committed violent acts, and to examine the prevalence of violence in psychiatric patients in different settings.

Kety SS, Rosenthal D, Wender PH, et al. The biologic and adoptive families of adopted individuals who became schizophrenic prevalence of mental illness and other characteristics. In Wynne LC, Cromwell RL, Matthysse S, eds. The nature of schizophrenia new approaches to research and treatment New York John Wiley Sons, 1978 25-37. 

Depression is considered to be the most prevalent mental illness in the United States, with approximately 15 percent of adults experiencing major depression at some point in their life.73 Likewise, as many as 10 percent of Americans may experience major depression over a 1-year period.43 In this sense, depression is a form of mental illness characterized by intense feel-... 

According to the 1999 Ontario Student Dmg Use Survey, researchers note that substance abuse disorders account for the most prevalent mental health conditions in young people. As the abusing population increases, so will future clinical needs of this population. Psilocybin use can precipitate long-term mental illness. 

Compared with persons without a psychiatric diagnosis, the one year prevalence of violence is five to six times higher in patients with serious mental illness in the community (Swanson et al., 1990). The risk for aggression is increased further in patients with severe mental illness who are hospitalized (Tardiff et al., 1997 Owen et al., 1999 Barlow et al., 2000) and in patients with comorbid schizophrenia and substance abuse (Steadman et al., 1998 Elbogen Johnson, 2009). Thus, patients with schizophrenia represent a group at elevated risk for violence. 

It should be noted that these prevalence rates may be underestimates of mental illness in the United States. First, the sample drawn was household listings and thus did not include individuals who were homeless or institutionalized (such as in nursing homes or psychiatric hospitals). Second, the study did not assess some less common psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism. 

Schizophrenia is the most devastating of the major mental illnesses. Its prevalence is stable across cultural and national boundaries, affecting between 0.5% and 1.5% of all populations. In the United Kingdom the economic cost of schizophrenia has been put at some 850 million per year, ranking it third behind strokes and learning disabilities as the most costly illness to the health service (Knapp, 1997). In human terms, the damage caused by schizophrenia is incalculable. It is known, for example, that as many as 12% of schizophrenics eventually commit suicide (Brown, 1997). 

Higgins, E. (1994). A review of unrecognized mental illness in primary care Prevalence, natural history, and efforts to change the course. Archives of Family Medicine, 3, 899-907. 

A word about prevalence mental illness is more common than many people imagine. The current prevalence estimates are that about half the U.S. population meets the criteria for at least one mental disorder during a lifetime, with about 25 percent of the population meeting the criteria for at least one mental disorder during any given year.1 Of these disorders, the most prevalent are apparently anxiety disorders, followed by mood disorders (for example, major depressive disorder), impulse-control disorders (for example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD]), and substance disorders (for example, alcohol abuse). In contrast, the prevalence of psychosis as I define it here is only 2—3 percent of the U.S. population, and the world prevalence is about the same. 

If the prevalence of an adult mental illness is correlated with season of birth, the simplest explanation is that something happened during gestation. We know of no biological mechanism for season of birth to change an inherited genome, but we know plenty of possible mechanisms for season of birth to affect fetal development by infection, nutrition, stress, and so on. 

Certainly, low socioeconomic status increases the prevalence of infection, exposure to toxins, poor nutrition, and many other prenatal impacts that may be involved in fetal brain damage and in the etiology of later mental illness. 

As witchcraft claimed its victims mainly from among certain classes, so does mental illness. The public madhouses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were full of society s misSrables the state mental hospitals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been full of poor and uneducated people.Why Because the social control and subjection of these people is one of the chief aims of Institutional Psychiatry. This, of course, is not the official psychiatric explanation. Spokesmen for the Mental Health Movement view the prevalence of lowermental hospitals as an indication of the high incidence of mental illness in the lower classes they thus construe it as justification for special psychiatric case-finding among these people. For example, the... 

Another extensive evaluation was undertaken in India (Chopra and Chopra, 1939) in which the authors noted the prevalent usage of cannabis as a stress reliever and accessory to hard physical labor. They even acknowledged a benefit in individuals suffering from hypochondriasis or neurosis. They summarized the issue of etiological causation of mental illness as follows (p. 103) It does not necessarily produce insanity except in perhaps those who have predisposition to it. ... 

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