Adverse Mental Health Continues to be a Problem in The United States
Consider these current mental health statistics:
• Mental illness and substance use disorders account for one in eight visits to hospital emergency rooms.
• Nearly 50 million people, or 19.86% of the population, live with some mental health issue.
• Almost 5% of American adults admit to having suicidal thoughts in the last year.
• Over 10% of American youth have severe major depression. Of those youth, almost 15% identified as more than one race.
• Students diagnosed with depression are more than 50% more likely to drop out of high school than their peers.
• Beginning with first grade and going through high school graduation, students with mental health challenges are 300% more likely to repeat a grade than their peers.
• People diagnosed with depression have a 40% higher rate of cardiovascular issues than the general population.
• Over 15% of American youth experienced at least one major depressive episode in the last year.
• Over 60% of youth diagnosed with a mental illness do not receive treatment.
• Nearly 50% of adults with mental health challenges do not receive treatment.
• Less than 33% of youth diagnosed with depression receive consistent treatment.
• Almost 8% of adults and over 4% of youth had a substance abuse issue before COVID-19, and the rate climbed substantially during the pandemic.
