In support of Mental Health Awareness Week — meant to increase awareness of mental health issues and helping people better understand mental disorders — we’ve created the graph below to give you a better idea of the prevalence (in the past year) of these disorders in the general American population. The media sometimes emphasizes one disorder over another, distorting the picture of how many people actually have the disorder. For instance, the graph shows that bipolar disorder — the subject of so many advertising campaigns, TV commercials and more — has similar prevalence rates to panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and binge eating.
Mental disorders are more common than many people realize, and far fewer people seek out treatment for them than you’d expect. Perhaps we should look at different and unique ways to better bring mental health treatment to people, whether it be psychotherapy, medications, or a combination thereof. Even single session psychotherapy can be beneficial to people.
Throughout the country and in communities across America, thousands of people are walking and meeting at events this week to show their support of greater awareness and education about mental health concerns. We join them in their support of these efforts.
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Links to This Article
Mental health critical to reform « The Mental Health Minute (11/3/2009)
Dying for Help: A stark look at teen mental health, Part I « The Mental Health Minute (11/5/2009)
8 Comments to
“Prevalence of Common Mental Disorders”
that’s a really interesting way of visualising the different conditions.
Personally, I was surprised that the eating disorders didn’t occupy a larger percentage. It was also somewhat of a relief to see Social Phobia is more common than I thought, as it is one of those that can make the sufferer think they are on their own.
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I also found it an interesting way to visualize the data, so I thought others might find it useful as well.
So much data is locked up in tables and charts that make it hard for our brains to properly visualize how it all relates and interacts with one another. Graphics like this can really open up to visualize comparisons in a more intuitive manner.
Given the number of people who experience a mental health condition, it’s surprising that the awareness and understanding is still so low. Talking about mental health openly and honestly helps to challenge the myths about conditions such as anorexia or depression - and might help us move on together. Now recovering from chronic anorexia bulimia, it’s a relief to see that people are beginning to recognise the effective treatment out there - and that the number of sufferers for this devastating illness are not quite as high as I feared.
This graphic representation of data is helpful and seems to be accurate (e.g., using meta-analytic data from studies of eating disorders).
Notably, if alcohol and substance abuse and dependence were represented here, they would take up quite a bit of space!
Thanks for the helpful graphic!
Thank you for this! This is great. I am really surprised at all the numbers especially for Bipolar and Schizophrenia. The media portrays it as if every other person suffers from those illnesses. Also, being a GAD/Panic disorder sufferer myself I Am surprised those numbers weren’t higher. But I guess that’s what happens when you have something, you just assume it’s more common among everyone else! Thanks again!
This is a very interesting visual depiction. I appreciate this but I thought we would see more of the prevalent problems in the US. Perhaps I am misinformed but I thought the three top psychological illnesses were substance abuse, anxiety and depression. Perhaps not in that order but I’ve been looking to find some good statistics on this. Might you have any?
I like the diagram too - but what do the union of the circles indicate? At first I thought it was a Venn diagram representing comorbidity, but a quick second look gave me the impression the overlapping circles only represent subtypes of the major disorders.
With this degree of prevalence of mental health problems, one would think discussing such issues with peers would be more comfortable. From my personal experience, I have found this is not the case. Not only do I feel isolated trying to get through graduate school with these challenges, but I have also found that bringing the issue up for discussion or sharing often leaves me feeling even more isolated.
Interesting visual. A quibble I can’t resist expressing: technically there is no such thing as a prevalence rate. Prevalence is a “snapshot” measure of how many cases there are of a disease at a particular time. A rate, on the other hand, is measured over a period of time. So either mental disorders are measured at a given point in time (prevalence) or they are measured over a period of time (incidence/rate per unit time).
The source for the data is rather vague (NIMH and others) but I suspect the data are intended as prevalences, not as rates. So the chart could simply be titled “Prevalence of Common Mental Disorders.”
Here is an explanation of prevalence vs. incidence: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/specialarticles/jcn_9_188.pdf
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 5 Oct 2009
