Who Are the Mentally Ill?

Tom Fadden
Sep 4, 2018 · 2 min read

The U.S. Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration describes who are the mentally ill in the United States. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans aged 18 and older, about one in four adults or 57.7 million people, suffer from a diagnosable mental illness in a given year. Even though mental illnesses are widespread in the population, the main burden of illness is concentrated in a much smaller proportion, about 6 percent or 1 in 17, who suffer from a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The most common mental illnesses in the United States are anxiety and mood disorders.

SAMHSA cites the prevalence of mental illness:

  • Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S., 43.8 million or 18.5 percent, experiences mental illness in a given year.
  • Approximately 1 in 25 adults in the U.S., 10 million or 4.2 percent, experiences a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.
  • Approximately 1 in 5 youth aged 13–18 (21.4 percent) experiences a severe mental disorder at some point during their life. For children aged 8–15, the estimate is 13 percent.
  • 1.1 percent of adults in the U.S. live with schizophrenia.
  • 2.6 percent of adults in the U.S. live with bipolar disorder.
  • 6.9 percent of adults in the U.S., 16 million, had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.
  • 18.1 percent of adults in the U.S. experienced an anxiety disorder such as posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and specific phobias.
  • Among the 20.2 million adults in the U.S. who experienced a substance use disorder, half had a co-occurring mental illness.

Here are the social statistics:

  • An estimated 26 percent of homeless adults staying in shelters live with serious mental illness, and an estimated 46 percent live with severe mental illness and/or substance use disorders.
  • Approximately 20 percent of state prisoners and 21 percent of local jail prisoners have “a recent history” of a mental health condition.
  • 70 percent of youth in juvenile justice systems have at least one mental health condition and at least 20 percent live with a serious mental illness.
  • Only 41 percent of adults in the U.S. with a mental health condition received mental health services in the past year. Among adults with a serious mental illness, 62.9 percent received mental health services in the past year.
  • Just over half (50.6%) of children aged 8–15 received mental health services in the previous year.
  • African Americans and Hispanic Americans used mental health services at about one-half the rate of Caucasian Americans in the past year and Asian Americans at about one-third the rate.
  • Half of all chronic mental illness begins by age 14; three-quarters by age 24. Despite effective treatment, there are long delays, sometimes decades, between the first appearance of symptoms and when people get help.

BRAINY MATTERS

Serving America’s Mentally Ill

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