"Rates of mental illness are on the rise. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), US adults over the age of eighteen had higher rates of mental illness in 2017 than in all but three of the years between 2008 and 2015. Of note, the youngest group (those aged eighteen through twenty-five) had the largest increase--rising 40 percent between 2008 and 2017."
"Depression in children, adolescents, and young adults is increasing as well. From 2006 to 2017, rates of depression in the US increased by 68 percent in children ages twelve to seventeen. In people ages eighteen to twenty-five, there was an increase of 49 percent."
"...many reports suggest that burnout is on the rise. Burnout is not an official psychiatric diagnosis in the DSM-5 (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition), but the World Health Organization recently added it to its list of mental disorders--the ICD-11 (International Classification of Diseases, Eleventh Revision). The criteria are similar to those for depression, but focus primarily on the stress of work and the work environment. There has been a lot of debate about whether burnout is simply a work-related form of depression, and for good reason: In one study looking at physician burnout, they found that those with mild burnout were three times more likely to meet criteria for major depression. Those with severe burnout were forty-six times more likely, suggesting little, if any, difference between these diagnostic labels. Like depression, burnout is also associated with much higher rates of suicide. Because burnout is not yet an official diagnosis in the DSM-5, US agencies don't track its prevalence. However, a 2018 Gallup poll found that 23 percent of employees reported feeling burned out at work often or always, while another 44 percent felt burned out sometimes. These rates are much higher than those of depression."
"The diagnosis of autism is increasing at an alarming rate. In 2000, autism affected about 1 in 150 children in the US; by 2014, it was about 1 in 59."
"The statistics for bipolar disorder are also concerning. From the mid-1970s to 2000, the prevalence of bipolar disorder was somewhere in the range of 0.4 to 1.6 percent. By the early 2000s, it had increased to 4 to 7 percent."
"The statistics are difficult to comprehend. Diagnoses like autism and bipolar disorder aren't supposed to increase exponentially over such a short period of time. While anxiety and depression can be situational, these other disorders are generally regarded as firmly "biological," and many researchers believe they are determined in large part by genetics. Clearly, the human species didn't have an epidemic of genetic mutations."
"Researchers, clinicians, and society at large are struggling to understand what to make of the sharp increase in mental illness."
"To add insult to injury, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken an additional toll. In June 2020, an estimated 40 percent of all US adults reported struggling with mental health or substance use issues. Eleven percent of the adults surveyed said they had considered suicide in the past 30 days."
From:
Christopher M. Palmer, MD
Brain Energy
Comments