Tallying Mental Illness' Costs

[southern_belle]

Serious mental illnesses (SMIs), which afflict about 6% of American adults, cost society $193.2 billion in lost earnings per year, according to findings published in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry. Surveying data from nearly 5,000 participants, researchers determined that people suffering from a SMI — defined as a range of mood and anxiety disorders, including suicidal tendencies, that significantly impaired a person's ability to function for at least 30 days over the past year — earned at least 40% less than people in good mental health. "The results of this study confirm the belief that mental disorders contribute to enormous losses of human productivity," says Ronald Kessler, a Harvard professor of health care policy and lead author of the study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Researchers arrived at that figure using data from the 2002 National Comorbidity Survey Replication, a nationally representative study designed to gauge the overall mental health of Americans, and extrapolated it to the general population. Kessler and his colleagues determined that a person suffering from SMI had earned $23,000 on average in the previous year. Those respondents without SMI averaged nearly $40,000. The researchers attributed 75% of that difference to the person's mental illness. The other 25% was attributed to a greater likelihood that a mentally ill person would not have worked at all, thus earning nothing — Kessler says, for example, that very few participants with autism, schizophrenia or other chronic illnesses were included in the $193 billion figure.

Though these figures may seem high, Kessler and his colleagues caution that they are likely too conservative. For one thing, the study's conclusions are based on data from 2002; today, Kessler says, the rate of mental illness is likely higher due to a variety of causes, including the Iraq war in 2003. But, more importantly, lost earning potential is only one of the many indirect costs of mental illness in American society. Social Security payments, homelessness and incarceration add to that economic burden, as well as direct costs such as medications and physicians' care. "The actual costs are probably higher that what we have estimated," Kessler says.

What's more, Kessler's report considers only severe mental illness in its calculations. Yet more than one in four American adults suffers from shorter-term, but clinically diagnosable mental disorders in a given year — including depression or an eating disorder — and such disorders are the leading cause of disability among U.S. workers under age 45. In 2005, research by Kessler showed that 60% of Americans with a mental disorder got no treatment for their ailment at all.

One longtime barrier to psychiatric care has been reluctance by insurance companies to consider mental illnesses on par with physical ones and thus not pay as well to treat them. Only 6.2% of current U.S. health care spending is devoted to the treatment of mental disorders. Federal lawmakers may soon change that. Following the lead of many states, the U.S. House of Representatives in March passed legislation that would require equal health insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses, when policies offer coverage for both. "Mental illness and drug addiction are every bit as real and serious as physical illness," said Congressman Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut, of his vote in favor of the bill. "And by providing intervention and early treatment we may be able to prevent more serious and costly conditions down the road."

{emphasis mine}

More at http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1738804,00.html

[realisticphish]

1. honestly

I think that, while insurance is a major issue, the social stigma of mental health care has a far larger effect. You go to a therapist? Either you're fucked up and a crazy person, or you're a "wussy" hypochondriac

[Forkboy]

2. That's a big part of it.

Very good point. It is slowly getting better, but it's not to the point where people can just accept it yet.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. Don't forget toxic workplaces and bullying bosses and coworkers.

That's a big part of it -- bosses acting irrationally and workers having little or no control over their work.