Facts about mental illness

One in four adults (25%) - approximately 57.7 million Americans - experience a mental health disorder in a given year.  One in seventeen lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major deptression or bipolar disorder.

About 2.4 million Americans, or 1.1 percent of the adult population, lives with schizophrenia.

Bipolar disorder affects 5.7 million American adults, approximately 2.6 percent of the adult population per year.

Major depressive disorder affects 6.7 percent of adults, or about 14.8 million American adults.  According to the 2004 World Helath Report, this is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada in ages between 15 to 44.

Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, three-quarters by age 24.  Despite effective treatments, there are long delays - sometimes decades- between first onset of symptoms and when people seek and receive treatment.

Anxiety disorders, which include panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generalized anxiety disorder, and phobias, affect about 18.1 percent of adults, an estimated 40 million individuals.  Anxiety disorders frequently co-occur with depression or addiction disorders.

An estimated 5.2 million adults have co-occurring mental health and addiction disorders (or dual-duagnosis).

Mental illness is a neurological disorder that affects all races and socioeconomic classes.

Symptoms of mental illness are often visible but frequently misunderstood.  Help is needed to bridge the gap of misunderstanding between persons with a mental illness, families, friends, and the community.

Mental illnesses are biologically-based diseases that can severely disturb a person's ability to think, feel, and relate to other people and the environment.  These illnesses are not caused by poor parenting.

  Fewer than one-third of adults and half of children with a diagnosable mental disorder receive any mental health services in a given year.

Suicide is the eleventh leading cause of death in the U.S., and the third leading cause of death for ages 0 to 24 years.  More than 90 percent of those who die by suicide have a diagnosable mental disorder.