Public release date: 1-Oct-2007

New findings published by Drs. Kathleen Merikangas from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Ronald Kessler from Harvard Medical School and colleagues in the October 2007 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry show that more than half of U.S. adults have a mental or physical condition that influences their role functioning. In addition, more than 1.3 billion days out of role performance are lost each year in the U.S. due to mental disorders, and major depression is the mental disorder associated with the largest number of days out of role. The study also found that the number of days out of role due to mental disorders is roughly half as large as the number of days associated with all chronic physical conditions combined.

The findings showed that more than half of U.S. adults have a mental or physical condition that is associated with excess days out of role, leading to an estimated 3.7 billion days per year out of role associated with the conditions studied. Nationwide, about 2.4 billion disability days resulted from the chronic physical conditions studied and about 1.3 billion disability days resulted from the mental conditions studied. The effects of individual mental conditions were as large as those of most chronic physical conditions. Chronic back-neck pain was the condition associated with the largest number of days out of role (1.2 billion), followed by major depression resulting in the second largest number of days out of role (387 million).