WASHINGTON — About 20 percent of American adults suffer some sort of mental illness each year, and about 5 percent experience a serious disorder that disrupts work, family or social life, according to a government report released Thursday.
The annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health finds that mental illness is most prevalent in women, young adults, the unemployed and people with low incomes. Drug and alcohol abuse is more than twice as common in people with mental illness as in those without it. About 4 percent of adults contemplate suicide each year.
According to the study, just under half the people with any mental illness, and only 60 percent of those with serious, disabling ones, get treatment each year. Whites and American Indians are more likely to get treatment than blacks, Latinos or Asians.
In all, about 14 percent of American adults receive some sort of behavioral care each year, and one in five said he or she wanted more, the survey found.
Prescription medicine was the most common treatment, used by 12 percent of adults. Between 2002 and 2010, the percentage of adults getting outpatient counseling fell slightly to 7 percent, while the fraction of adults using a prescription drug went up.
The findings were drawn from interviews with about 68,500 randomly selected Americans living at homes, dormitories or shelters in 2010.
The Washington Post
