Half of the world’s population could have a mental health disorder, such as major depression or a panic attack, by age 75, a large study suggests.
Researchers drew on 20 years of World Health Organization surveys of more than 156,000 adults from 29 countries and predicted that one in two people could have at least one mental disorder by the time they get old, a sharp increase from estimates. of 2019 of one in eight.
The overall risk of developing mental illness during a person’s lifetime was 46 percent for male participants and a slightly elevated 53 percent for females.
And women, in particular, were at the highest risk for post-traumatic stress disorder, while men were more likely to abuse alcohol. Major depressive disorder and specific phobias were equally common in both sexes.
The rate of mental illness in the US is on the rise and has worsened in recent years, during which time the suicide rate rose from 45,900 to more than 48,000. The latest analysis highlights the fact that the mental health crisis is not limited to the US, but has taken on global proportions.
The three most common mental health disorders in women were depression, a specific phobia (anxiety that interferes with daily life) and PTSD. In men, the three most common mental health disorders were alcohol abuse, depression and a specific phobia
The data set researchers relied on was the largest coordinated set of face-to-face interviews on the issue of mental health
The large-scale analysis was conducted by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Queensland in Australia, who collected data from face-to-face interviews with 156,331 people around the world from 2001 to 2022.
The interviews were part of WHO’s Mental Health Survey, comprising data from 29 countries, including the US, many in Europe and the UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Japan, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and several in South America and Africa.
Dr. John McGrath, a mental health researcher at the University of Queensland’s Brain Institute, said: ‘The most common were mood disorders such as major depression or anxiety. We also found that the risk of certain mental disorders differed by gender.’
Women were significantly more likely than men to report having some type of diagnosed anxiety disorder in their lifetime, nearly 19 percent versus 11 percent.
Women were also slightly more likely to have a mental health disorder at 29.8 percent compared to 28.6 percent of men.
At the time people were interviewed, the most common mental problem among men was risky alcohol use and abuse (which was classified separately from alcohol dependence) with 14 percent reported, followed by major depressive disorder with 7.5 percent of men reporting that diagnosis .
Five percent reported having a specific phobia, defined as a disabling fear that interferes with their daily lives.
Meanwhile, women were most likely to report a major depressive disorder when interviewed with an incidence of 13.6 percent, making them nearly twice as likely than men to receive that diagnosis at some point in their lives. They were also twice as likely to suffer from a specific phobia.
While the study was useful in helping researchers quantify the impact that various mental disorders have had on a large segment of the population, it also made it clear that the age of onset for any of these disorders is quite young – around 15 year. year.
Nearly one-third of all American high school students report suffering from poor mental health. It is because some of the country’s leaders say that the country is going through a youth crisis. Women suffered the most, with 40 percent reporting poor mental health that year
The percentage of adults reporting being diagnosed with depression has risen to 29 percent, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015
Based on their findings, the bevy of international authors of the study concluded that more financial and social investment is needed to better diagnose and treat people at the earliest possible age, which greatly increases their chances of living longer.
Dr. Ronald Kessler, a healthcare policy specialist at Harvard University, said: ‘Services need to be able to detect and treat common mental disorders quickly, and they need to be optimized for patients in these critical areas of their lives.
“Understanding the age at which these conditions are common allows us to tailor public health interventions and allocate resources to ensure that appropriate and timely support is available to those at risk.”
The team’s findings were published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry.
It’s no secret that the US is in the midst of a mental health crisis, exacerbated by pandemic-era lockdowns and isolation, as well as curtailment of preventive care such as psychiatric screening, as well as chronic underfunding of mental health infrastructure and devastating staff shortages that often mean there isn’t enough care to go around.
American teens are hardest hit by the crisis, as they have been abruptly thrust into a world of online-only education without being able to socialize and bond with friends, on top of a general sense of overwhelming fear of the coronavirus.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that by 2021, 10.2 percent of U.S. high school students said they had attempted suicide in the past 12 months, up from about 8 percent in 2019
Researchers found that 29.3 percent of U.S. high school students said their mental health was regularly poor in the past year, including 40.8 percent of female college students.