Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Psychiatric Disabilities in U.S. Show Steep Rise

About 2.7 percent of Americans aged 18 to 64 reported some level of disability due to depression, anxiety, or emotional problems in the period 2007-2009, according to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health.

That represents an increase from 2.0 percent 10 years earlier even as the prevalence of disability attributed to other chronic conditions decreased, wrote Ramin Mojtabai, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The increase in the prevalence of psychiatric disability occurred mainly among two groups: adults with disabilities caused by other chronic conditions and adults with a greater level of psychological distress who had not had any contacts with mental health professionals during the prior year.

To read more about issues concerning psychiatric disability, see Psychiatric News at http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/46/16/10.1.full.


(Image: Ed Phillips/Shutterstock.com)

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