What Percent Of The Us Population Suffers From Depression

Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans And Depression

Many Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans have developed mental and behavioral conditions as a result of their combat experiences or other war-zone stressors. A 2015 study by researchers at VA’s Translational Research Center for TBI and Stress Disorders at the VA Boston Healthcare System identified three such conditions that cause the greatest level of difficulty in Veterans when they occur together.

The three conditions are depression, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury . Patients with those conditions, which the researchers call the “deployment trauma factor,” have higher disability scores than those with any other three-diagnosis combination.

The disabilities measured include difficulty in getting around, communicating and getting along with others, self-care, and other daily tasks. Other common problems that appeared to predict disability included anxiety conditions other than PTSD, pain along with sleep difficulty, and substance abuse or dependence.

The State Of Mental Health In America

Mental Health America is committed to promoting mental health as a critical part of overall wellness. We advocate for prevention services for all, early identification and intervention for those at risk, integrated services, care and treatment for those who need them, and recovery as the goal.

We believe that gathering and providing up-to-date data and information about disparities faced by individuals with mental health problems is a tool for change.

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Depression Is Different From Sadness Or Grief/bereavement

The death of a loved one, loss of a job or the ending of a relationship are difficult experiences for a person to endure. It is normal for feelings of sadness or grief to develop in response to such situations. Those experiencing loss often might describe themselves as being depressed.

But being sad is not the same as having depression. The grieving process is natural and unique to each individual and shares some of the same features of depression. Both grief and depression may involve intense sadness and withdrawal from usual activities. They are also different in important ways:

• In grief, painful feelings come in waves, often intermixed with positive memories of the deceased. In major depression, mood and/or interest are decreased for most of two weeks.
• In grief, self-esteem is usually maintained. In major depression, feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing are common.
• In grief, thoughts of death may surface when thinking of or fantasizing about joining the deceased loved one. In major depression, thoughts are focused on ending ones life due to feeling worthless or undeserving of living or being unable to cope with the pain of depression.

Grief and depression can co-exist For some people, the death of a loved one, losing a job or being a victim of a physical assault or a major disaster can lead to depression. When grief and depression co-occur, the grief is more severe and lasts longer than grief without depression.

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Who Is Affected By Depression

• Major depressive disorder affects approximately 17.3 million American adults, or about 7.1% of the U.S. population age 18 and older, in a given year.
• Major depressive disorder is more prevalent in women than in men. : 3095-105)
• 1.9 million children, 3 17, have diagnosed depression.
• Adults with a depressive disorder or symptoms have a 64 percent greater risk of developing coronary artery disease.

Statistics Related To Mental Health Disorders

The following are the latest statistics available from the National Institute of Mental Health Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health:

• Mental health disorders account for several of the top causes of disability in established market economies, such as the U.S., worldwide, and include: major depression , manic depression , schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

• An estimated 26% of Americans ages 18 and older — about 1 in 4 adults — suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

• Many people suffer from more than one mental disorder at a given time. In particular, depressive illnesses tend to co-occur with substance abuse and anxiety disorders.

• Approximately 9.5% of American adults ages 18 and over, will suffer from a depressive illness each year.

• Women are nearly twice as likely to suffer from major depression than men. However, men and women are equally likely to develop bipolar disorder.
• While major depression can develop at any age, the average age at onset is the mid-20s.
• With bipolar disorder, which affects approximately 2.6% of Americans age 18 and older in a given year — the average age at onset for a first manic episode is during the early 20s.

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Fact: Depression Is A Worldwide Issue

According to the World Health Organization, depression is a major issue throughout the world and one of the most common mental illnesses. People in some countries face specific barriers to getting treatment. These include lack of resources and health professionals trained in mental health. Barriers also include stigma and misdiagnoses, which are common in many countries.

Depression has a big economic and social impact globally. It causes more disability than any other health condition, which means that depression reduces the ability to work in adults and to go to school and perform successfully in young people. Depression causes billions of dollars in lost work hours and productivity throughout the world. Here are some additional statistics about depression around the globe:

• Worldwide, depression is the leading cause of disability.
• More than 300 million people of all ages around the world live with depression.
• Nearly 800,000 people die of suicide around the world each year.
• Less than half of people struggling with depression get treatment.
• In some countries, less than 10 percent get treatment.
• The burden of all mental illnesses, including depression, is increasing.

Depression Is Complicated This Is How Our Understanding Of The Condition Has Evolved Over Time

People often think of depression as a single, uniform condition deep sadness and a loss of interest in the activities that someone usually enjoys. But depression is complicated and its difficult to define what it means in an objective way.

This is because depression is a condition of the mind: it is diagnosed based on peoples psychological symptoms and behavior, not from a brain scan or markers in their blood or DNA.

When we diagnose depression, we have to rely on people to recall their own symptoms. We have to trust that doctors will observe and probe their symptoms reliably. We have to analyze this information to understand what people with depression experience that other people dont.

Our ability to do all of these things accurately has changed over time, and so has our understanding of depression.

This comes down to three factors.

First, many countries now screen for depression in the general population, not just in a subset of people who are seen by a small number of doctors. In many studies, researchers track patients over long periods of time to understand how the condition progresses.

Second, we use questionnaires and interviews that treat depression as a condition that can occur at different levels and change with time.

Third, we have better statistical tools to help us refine questionnaires and understand how symptoms are related to one another.

Surveying depression in the general population

Measuring depression on levels

Analyzing depression with more rigour

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How Is Prevalence Defined And Measured

The widespread issue of underreporting means accurate and representative data on the prevalence of disorders is difficult to define. If relying on mental health diagnoses alone, this underestimation would be severe. Prevalence figures would be likely to reflect healthcare spending rather than giving a representative perspective on differences between countries high-income countries would likely show significantly higher prevalence as a result of more diagnoses.

The data presented in this entry by the Institute of Health Metrics & Evaluation is therefore based on a combination of sources, including medical and national records, epidemiological data, in addition to survey data. Where raw data for a particular country is scarce, epidemiological data and meta-regression models must be used based on available data from neighbouring countries. Data quality issues are described below.

The data presented here therefore offers an estimate of mental health prevalence based on medical, epidemiological data, surveys and meta-regression modelling.

Risk Factors For Mental Health

The determinants, onset and severity of mental health disorders are complex they can rarely be attributed to a single factor. Identifying potential risk factors form an important element of health research, potential prevention and in some cases, appropriate treatment nonetheless, many risk factors remain only correlates of observed patterns in mental health. They therefore need to be interpreted carefully.

The World Health Organization synthesize the potential contributors to mental health and wellbeing into three categories:29

• individual attributes and behaviours: these can be particular genetic factors or personality traits
• social and economic circumstances
• environmental factors.

In the table we see the WHOs breakdown of potential adverse and protective factors for mental health within these three categories. These factors often interact, compound or negate one another and should therefore not be considered as individual traits or exposures. For example, particular individual traits may make a given person more vulnerable to mental health disorders with the onset of a particular economic or social scenario the instance of one does not necessarily result in a mental health disorder, but combined there is a significantly higher vulnerability.

Risk factors through the life-course

Pre-conception and pre-natal period

Infancy and early childhood

Childhood

Adolescence

Adulthood

Older age

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Rates In Children And Adolescents

Depression can begin during childhood or during the teenage years. Similar to the prevalence rates in adults, girls are more likely to experience depression than boys. Theres a sharp increase in depression in girls just after puberty.

Although there has been a rise in teenage depression, according to a 2016 American Academy of Pediatrics study, there has not been a corresponding increase in treatment for teenagers.

The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends regular depression screening for all adolescents 12 and over, given that the symptoms of depression are often missed by adults such as parents, teachers, and even doctors.

Here are the most recent depression statistics in children and adolescents:

• 3.1 million young people between the ages of 12 and 17 have experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year in the United States.
• 2% to 3% of children ages 6 to 12 may have serious depression.
• 20% of adolescent girls have experienced a major depressive episode.
• 6.8% of adolescent boys have experienced a major depressive episode.
• 71% of adolescents who experienced a major depressive episode in the past year experienced a severe impairment.
• 60% of children and adolescents with depression are not getting any type of treatment.
• 19% of children with depression saw a health care professional for treatment.

Depression And Heart Disease: Other Va Studies

Mental disorders and heart attack riskBy examining the health histories of more than 350,000 Veterans over a seven-year period, researchers from the St. Louis VA Medical Center reported, in 2010, that those with depression are at about 40 percent higher risk than others for having a heart attack.

General anxiety and panic disorder seem to raise the risk to a similar extent, and posttraumatic stress disorder also raises the riskbut to a lesser degree. Researchers are continuing to study whether treating these mental disorders reduces heart risk.

Vascular depressionIn a follow-up study, whose results were published in 2012, researchers found that those who had depression in middle age were at an increased risk of developing vascular depression in old age, and that their mid-life depression could be a causal risk factor.

Ischemic heart diseaseIn 2014, researchers at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System reported that Veterans with depression are more likely to complain of increased chest pain related to ischemic heart disease.

Ischemia is a condition in which blood flow, and therefore oxygen, is restricted or reduced in a part of the body. Ischemic heart disease, also known as coronary artery disease, is the term given to heart problems caused by narrowed heart arteries.

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Major Depression And Genetics

How common is major depression? At least 10% of people in the U.S. will experience major depressive disorder at some point in their lives. Two times as many women as men experience major depression.

How do we know that genes play a role in causing depression? Scientists look at patterns of illness in families to estimate their heritability, or roughly what percentage of their cause is due to genes. To do this we find people with the disease who have a twin, and then find out whether the twin is also ill. Identical twins share 100% of their genes, while non-identical twins share 50% of their genes. If genes are part of the cause, we expect a patients identical twin to have a much higher risk of disease than a patients non-identical twin. That is the case for major depression. Heritability is probably 40-50%, and might be higher for severe depression.

This could mean that in most cases of depression, around 50% of the cause is genetic, and around 50% is unrelated to genes . Or it could mean that in some cases, the tendency to become depressed is almost completely genetic, and in other cases it is not really genetic at all. We dont know the answer yet.

We can also look at adoption studies, to see whether an adopted persons risk of depression is greater if a biological parent had depression. This also seems to be the case.

However, many people who develop major depression did not have this type of personality before their depression started.

Selected Scientific Articles By Our Researchers

Developing effective collaboration between primary care and mental health providers. Felker BL, Chaney E, Rubenstein LV, Bonner LM, Yano EM, Parker LE, Worley LLM, Sherman SE, Ober S. Programs like TIDES that have implemented collaboration between primary care and mental health services have resulted in improved patient care. Prim Care Companion J Clin Psychiatry, 2006 8:12-16

Depressive symptoms, health behaviors, and risk of cardiovascular events in patients with coronary heart disease. Whooley MA, de Jonge P, Vittinghoff E, Otte C, Moos R, Carney RM, Ali S, Dowray S, Na B, Feldman MD, Schiller NB, Browner WS. In this sample of outpatients with coronary heart disease, the association between depressive symptoms and adverse cardiovascular events was largely explained by behavioral factors, particularly physical inactivity. JAMA, 2008 Nov 26 300:2379-88.

Anxiety disorders increase risk for incident myocardial infarction in depressed and nondepressed Veterans Administration patients. Scherrer JF, Chrusclel T, Zeringue A, Garfield LD, Hauptman PJ, Lustman PJ, Freedland KE, Carney RM, Bucholz KK, Owen R, True WR. In VA patients free of heart disease in 1999 and 2000, those with depression, unspecified anxiety disorders, panic disorder and PTSD were at increased risk of heart attack. Am Heart J, 2010 May 159:772-9.

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Highly Developed Countries Have Higher Rates Of Mental Disorders

Greenland, Iran, Australia, the US, and New Zealand make the top five. In contrast, countries such as Turkey, Belgium, and Norway are very dedicated to solving the issue with a high number of specialists.

Depression statistics report good conditions for patients in Belgium and Turkey which have over 100 mental health nurses per 100,000 people, for example. Japan leads the way with mental health beds .

Depression By Education Level & Employment Status

The statistics presented in the entry above focus on aggregate estimates of prevalence across total populations. In the chart we present data on depression prevalence across a number of OECD countries, disaggregated by education level and employment status.44 This data is based on self-reported prevalence of depression as requested by surveys. There are multiple reasons why this data may differ from IHME statistics presented above: it is based only on adults aged 25-64 years old, and focuses on self-reported depression only. The lack of differentiation in these surveys between mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety disorders, and bipolar disorder mean that self-reported depression data may include individuals with these other disorders.

Categories in the chart have been coloured based on education level, with further categorisation based on whether groups are employed, actively seeking employment, and the total of employed, active and unemployed. Across most countries we tend to see the lowest prevalence in depression amongst those with tertiary education and highest prevalence in those who did not reach upper secondary education.

It is also notable that the large differences in education level close or disappear when we look only at the sub-group of those employed. Overall, the prevalence of depression appears to be lower in individuals in employment relative to those actively seeking employment, or the total population which also includes the unemployed.

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Fact: Young People And Older Adults Struggle With Depression Too

The average age of onset of depression is 32, but teens, seniors, and even children may develop and struggle with depression. The symptoms can vary, though, and children with depression are more likely to experience sadness and irritability, physical aches and pains, and weight loss. Children may also show signs of depression through their behaviors, such as refusing to go to school or being clingy and needy with parents or siblings.

Teens with depression experience many of the same symptoms as adults, but distinguishing them from normal teen angst can be difficult. Some signs that depression is the issue include drug or alcohol use, loss of interest in activities, self-harm, social withdrawal, poor school performance, and being excessively sensitive. In older adults, depression may cause physical pains, memory problems, personality changes, and social isolation.

• As many as one in eight adolescents have major depression.
• One in 33 children will struggle with depression.
• Untreated depression is the greatest risk factor for youth suicide.
• Those at the greatest risk for suicide are young men aged 15 to 24.
• Six million older Americans struggle with depression, but only 10 percent get treated.
• Elderly men are more likely than women to have suicidal thoughts.
• More than half of caretakers of elderly family members have symptoms of major depression.