Someone once said that the statistics of depression are miserable, and in fact, the statistics showing how many American people are depressed are staggering. For example, the National Institute of Mental Health, called the NIMH, said that depression affects about 17 million adults every year in America.
Unfortunately, this is much more than cancer, coronary heart disease and, even more than AIDS! Moreover, they indicate that in their estimates, 15 percent of cases of chronic depression may end in suicide. Women are said to be twice as possible as men to be chronically depressed. And 90% of suicides had a diagnosis of mental illness and it’s generally a depressive disorder.
Other depression statistics point out that approximately 80-90% of all cases can be effectively and successfully treated. This information is borne by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
The National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association has stated that an estimated $ 43 billion per year are lost because of depression. This is mainly attributed to medical expenses, lost productivity and certainly absenteeism from the work force. Furthermore, 80-90% of people with serious mental illness are jobless.
You may want to know what is depression. There are three different types of depression, bipolar or manic depression, major depression and finally dysthymia. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has stated that major depression may affect as many as 15% of Americans at some point during their lives.
Major depression is said to come in episodes, whereas dysthymia does not come in episodes at all, but rather is persistent through many years. According to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Depression Statistics point to almost 10 million Americans that may have dysthymia each year.
Manic-depression or Bipolar is much less common, as it’s reported in the statistics of depression that only about 6 million or 3% of American people are affected by this type of depression in a given year.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has reported that having a serious medical disease may cause depression as well. For example, persons who have had a heart attack, they’ll have 40% chance of feeling depressed.
Truly frightening on the topic of Depression Statistics are the great depression facts that nearly 80% of those who are now experiencing depression symptoms aren’t getting treatment. And 4% of adolescents may develop severe depression and really unfortunate is the truth that suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 24 years. It’s also expected that depression is going to be the world’s 2nd most universal health problem by the year 2020.
