Mental Health and The Global Burden of Disease
Mental, neurological, and substance use disorders make a substantial contribution to the global burden of disease (GBD). This is a global measure of so-called disability-adjusted life years (DALY's) assigned to a certain disease/disorder, which is a sum of the years lived with disability and years of life lost due to this disease within the total population. Neuropsychiatric conditions account for 14% of the global burden of disease. Among non-communicable diseases, they account for 28% of the DALY's — more than cardiovascular disease or cancer. However it is estimated that the real contribution of mental disorders to the global burden of disease is even higher, amongst others due to complex interactions and co-morbidity of physical and mental illness.
Around the world, almost one million people die due to suicide every year, and it is the third leading cause of death among young people. The most important causes of disability due to health-related conditions worldwide include unipolar depression, alcoholism, schizophrenia, bipolar depression and dementia. In low- and middle-income countries, these conditions represent a total of 19.1% of all disability related to health conditions.
Read more about this topic: Global Mental Health
Famous quotes containing the words mental, health, global, burden and/or disease:
“Surely it is one of the requisites of a tasteful garb that the expression of effort to please shall be wanting in it; that the mysteries of the toilet shall not be suggested by it; that the steps to its completion shall be knocked away like the sculptor’s ladder from the statue, and the mental force expended upon it be swept away out of sight like the chips on the studio floor.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“Ours is a brand—new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a global village ... a simultaneous happening.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“Christianity came into existence to lighten the heart, but now it needs to burden the heart to start with so it can lighten it afterwards. Consequently, it will perish.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs.... Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)