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The most recent issue of the prestigious journal Archives of General Psychiatry published the results of a U.S. government study that is almost beyond belief. It concerns the results of a study that was performed over the course of one year based on a study group of 10,000 adults of both sexes. The conclusions are truly troubling. Using sophisticated statistical calculations based on highly selective control protocols, researches from among the most prominent North American universities and psychiatric institutions have concluded that half the U.S. population is suffering from some type of mental disorder.
It seems like a joke, but it certainly is not. The figures in fact indicate a collective drama on a scale never before seen in the history of psychology. In the year in which the study was done, 41.1% of the research subjects received treatments aimed at controlling significant psychological injury; 12.3% were seen by psychiatrists; 16% received various kinds of psychotherapeutic treatments; 48.3% of those treated received no benefit from mental care, while only 12.7% showed a positive response to therapy.
The study by the National Institute of Mental Health is the most complex yet performed by a U.S. government research center and is sure to raise the bar for those working in the field of mental illness research: “what you have to remember is that mental disorders are highly pervasive and chronic,” asserts Thomas Insel, Director of the federal institute that directed the study, stressing that “a high percentage of the victims of depression in the U.S. are young: of the half of Americans who suffer from mental problems, 50% began to show symptoms by age 14 and 25% by age 24.” “Mental disorders are currently the most prominent chronic illness for U.S. youth,” declares Ronald Kesler, a Harvard epidemiologist and one of the authors of the study. He says that “unfortunately the appearance of symptoms is not accompanied by early diagnosis, and even less so by a cure.”
The most common problems recorded by the researchers are depression (17%) and alcoholism (13%). Phobias (13%) have also become common. More than a quarter of those questioned reported feeling distress recognizable as a mental disorder within the previous year. The report of the National Institute of Health comes amid a debate that is taking place in the U.S. concerning the necessity of “screening” for mental disorders in adults and children and also concerning the fine line between illness and health. The answers are bound to have an enormous impact on treatment methods and on the types of conditions insurance companies will cover. According to researchers, the problem at this point in the United States is a conspicuous underestimation of the level that psychological illness has reached throughout the nation.
Date: 16/06/2005
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005;62:629-640 Twelve-Month Use of Mental Health Services in the United States Results From the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, Philip S. Wang, MD, DrPH; Michael Lane, MS; Mark Olfson, MD, MPH; Harold A. Pincus, MD; Kenneth B. Wells, MD, MPH; Ronald C. Kessler, PhD
Posted Monday, January 15, 2007 10:56
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