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Home: Community full menu: Care and support: Health and well being: Mental health

Mental health - Impact and cost of mental illness

Ian Smith - July 2010
gatewaytocare@kirklees.gov.uk
Mental health problems are extremely common: one in six adults will have a mental health problem at any one time, and for half of these people the problem will last longer than a year. Over half of all adults with mental health problems will have begun to develop them by the time they were 14. For some people, mental health problems last for many years, particularly if inadequately treated.

The social and financial costs of mental health problems are immense. The burden on individuals, families, communities and society as a whole includes the psychological distress, the impact on physical health, the social consequences of mental health problems, and the financial and economic costs. Recent estimates put the full cost at around £77 billion, mostly due to lost productivity.

People with mental health problems need help and support to enable them to cope. There are many treatment options, including medication, counselling, psychotherapy, complementary therapies and self help strategies. It's important that people with mental health problems are told about the options available so they can make a decision about what treatment suits them best.

All facts and figures taken from New Horizons - A shared vision for mental health.
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Impact of mental illness

  • At any one time, just over 20% of working age women and 17% of working age men are affected by depression or anxiety; approximately 5% of men and 3% of women can be assessed as having a personality disorder and over 0.4% have a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorders.
  • Half of those with common mental health problems are limited by their condition and around a fifth are disabled by it.
  • Mental illness accounted for more disability adjusted life years lost per year than any other health condition in the UK and the figures for 2004 show that 20% of the total burden of disease was attributed to mental illness (including suicide), compared with 16.2% for cardiovascular disease and 15.6% for cancer. No other condition exceeded 10%.
  • No other mental health condition matches mental ill health in the combined extent of prevalence, persistence and breadth of impact.
  • Mental illness begins early; 10% of children have a diagnosable mental health condition and 50% of lifetime mental illness is present by the age of 14.

Cost of mental illness

  • Depression: annual service costs in England in 2007 were £1.7 billion, with lost employment increasing these costs to £7.5 billion; for anxiety the service costs were £1.2 billion with lost employment bringing the costs to £8.9 billion.
  • Schizophrenia: societal costs of schizophrenia alone were £6.7 billion per year in England in 2004/05. Cost of treatment and care was £2 billion. Other costs falling to society amounted to £4.7 billion, with £615 million being paid by families for informal care and private expenditure. Costs of lost productivity due to unemployment, absence from work and premature mortality were £3.4 billion. Annual cost of social security benefits is £570 million.
  • Dementia: total annual UK costs of dementia amounted to £17 billion.
  • Crime: mental health problems contribute to offending behaviour and a very high proportion of those in prison have one or more mental disorders.
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