26 percent of U.S. suffers mental disorder

26 percent of U.S. suffers mental disorder

"26 percent of U.S. suffers mental disorder
By UPI, BETHESDA, Md., June 7, 2005

Twenty-six percent of U.S. residents had symptoms of a mental disorder in the past year but only 17 percent got professional help, a landmark study concludes.

Six percent had such severe problems they could not function normally for an average of three months, concludes the study by the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., the University of Michigan and Harvard University.

The study, which conducted face-to-face interviews with 9,282 randomly selected people, concludes half of the people living in the United States will develop mental illness, with the young being hit the hardest.

Twenty-seven other countries were completing studies similar to the $20 million U.S. effort, but the United States was poised to be No. 1 in the world in mental illness.

"We lead the world in a lot of good things, but we're also leaders in this one particular domain that we'd rather not be," lead researcher Ronald Kessler told the Washington Post.

Researchers reported results of the study in four articles in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry."

Read the entire article