The global burden of mental disorders: An update from the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys

By Ronald C. Kessler, S. Aguilar-Gaxiola, Jordi Alonso, S. Chatterji, Sing Lee, Johan Ormel, T. B. Ustün, Philip S. Wang. Epidemiologia e Psichiatria Sociale, 2009

1,716 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Aims - The paper reviews recent findings from the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) surveys on the global burden of mental disorders. Methods - The WMH surveys are representative community surveys in 28 countries throughout the world aimed at providing information to mental health policy makers about the prevalence, distribution, burden, and unmet need for treatment of common mental disorders. Results - The first 17 WMH surveys show that mental disorders are commonly occurring in all participating countries. The inter-quartile range (IQR: 25th-75th percentiles) of lifetime DSM-IV disorder prevalence estimates (combining anxiety, mood, externalizing, and substance use disorders) is 18.1–36.1%. The IQR of 12-month prevalence estimates is 9.8–19.1%. Prevalence estimates of 12-month Serious Mental Illness (SMI) are 4–6.8% in half the countries, 2.3–3.6% in one-fourth, and 0.8–1.9% in one-fourth. Many mental disorders begin in childhood-adolescence and have significant adverse effects on subsequent role transitions in the WMH data. Adult mental disorders are found to be associated with such high role impairment in the WMH data that available clinical interventions could have positive cost-effectiveness ratios. Conclusions - Mental disorders are commonly occurring and often seriously impairing in many countries throughout the world. Expansion of treatment could be cost-effective from both employer and societal perspectives

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f2ba68152eb05d84e1a4f36ff5d11b9c28a35974

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Citations in the corpus

Depression as a disease of modernity: explanations for increasing prevalence (2012, background): “, 2002), though this bias has not been consistently replicated (Kessler et al., 2009).”
Rebooting Psychotherapy Research and Practice to Reduce the Burden of Mental Illness (2011, background): “A series of recent surveys from the World Health Organization assessing the global burden of mental illness found a lifetime DSM-IV disorder prevalence within its 17 participating countries of 12.0% to 47.4%, with the highest lifetime prevalence estimate in the United States (Kessler et al., 2009).”
Trauma and PTSD in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys (2017, background): “other WMH results document clearly that PTSD is a seriously impairing disorder (Kessler et al., 2009).”
Depression in the workplace: An economic cost analysis of depression-related productivity loss attributable to job strain and bullying (2013, background): “In the US, estimates for the cost of depression, primarily attributable to worker productivity loss whilst at work, vary widely from $US36 billion (Kessler et al., 2009) to $US53 billion per year (Greenberg, Kessler, Nells, Finkelstein, & Berndt, 1996) but are nevertheless substantial.”
Barriers to Mental Health Treatment: Results from the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys (2013, background): “Mental disorders are widespread, inflicting considerable morbidity and impairment (Demyttenaere et al. 2004; Mathers & Loncar, 2006; Kessler et al. 2009), and despite documented effectiveness of treatment (Yatham et al.”
Mental disorders in the entrepreneurship context : When Being Different Can Be an Advantage (2018, background): “As this example shows, the costs of mental disorders to society appear to be substantial (Kessler et al., 2009).”
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Neuroimaging cognitive reappraisal in clinical populations to define neural targets for enhancing emotion regulation. A systematic review (2016, background): “The combined lifetime prevalence of anxiety, mood, externalizing and substance use disorders is estimated to be 18-36% worldwide (Kessler et al., 2009).”
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