Lifetime Prevalence of Mental Disorders in US Adolescents: Results from the National Comorbidity Study-Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A)

By Kathleen R. Merikangas, Jian-ping He, M. Burstein, S. Swanson, S. Avenevoli, L. Cui, C. Benjet, Katholiki Georgiades, J. Swendsen. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2010

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Objective To present estimates of the lifetime prevalence of DSM-IV mental disorders with and without severe impairment, their comorbidity across broad classes of disorder, and their sociodemographic correlates. Method The National Comorbidity Survey-Adolescent Supplement NCS-A is a nationally representative face-to-face survey of 10,123 adolescents aged 13–18 years in the continental U.S. DSM-IV mental disorders were assessed using a modified version of the fully structured World Health Organization Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Results Anxiety disorders were the most common condition (31.9%), followed by behavior disorders (19.1%), mood disorders (14.3%), and substance use disorders (11.4%), with approximately 40% of those with one class of disorder also meeting criteria for another class of lifetime disorder. The overall prevalence of disorders with severe impairment and/or distress was 22.2%; (11.2% with mood disorders; 8.3% with anxiety disorders; 9.6% behavior disorders). The median age of onset for disorder classes was earliest for anxiety (6 years), followed by 11 years for behavior, 13 years for mood, and 15 years for substance use disorders. Conclusions These findings provide the first prevalence data on a broad range of mental disorders in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents. Approximately one in every 4–5 youth in the U.S. meets criteria for a mental disorder with severe impairment across their lifetime. The likelihood that common mental disorders in adults first emerge in childhood and adolescence highlights the need for a transition from the common focus on treatment of U.S. youth to that of prevention and early intervention.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eecbece9e69d6a01189162974ba20577e7c21b3a

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Citations in the corpus

Effects of School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports on Internalizing Problems (2014, background): “Given that internalizing problems are common (Merikangas et al., 2010) and typically go undetected (Kahlberg et al., 2011), this article will review the evidence for effects of SWPBIS on internalizing challenges, describe the mechanisms by which SWPBIS may support student internalizing problems,…”
The Adolescent Brain and the Emergence and Peak of Psychopathology (2015, background): “As many as one in five young people suffer from a mental illness with anxiety and stress related disorders being the most common (Merikangas et al., 2010).”
Automated assessment of psychiatric disorders using speech: A systematic review (2019, positive): “Results that correlate a feature with a subsymptom of a clinical scale were excluded (ie, only total scores from scales were used).(1)”
Conceptualizing High School Students' Mental Health Through a Dual-Factor Model (2016, background): “Mental health during the high school years entails declines in LS (Goldbeck, Schmitz, Besier, Herschbach, & Henrich, 2007) and increases in psychopathology, such as mood and conduct disorders (Merikangas et al., 2010).”
Mental Health Surveillance Among Children — United States, 2013–2019 (2022, background): “Although previous studies have shown higher a prevalence of anxiety among females compared with males (1,34), previous estimates with NSCH data have shown no differences in anxiety by sex (17,42), similar to the results in this report.”
Internet and Computer-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety and Depression in Youth: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Outcome Trials (2015, background): “Depression and anxiety are common in children and adolescents (in the following referred to collectively as youth ) [1 – 3] and often co-occur [4, 5].”