Bipolar4LifeSupport

Depression:

• According to the World Health Organization, unipolar depression was the third most important cause of disease burden worldwide in 2004. Unipolar depression was in “eighth place in low-income countries, but at first place in middle- and high-income countries.”¹
• In a nationally representative face-to-face household survey, 6.7% of U.S. adults experienced a major depressive episode in the past 12 months.²
• Significantly greater percentages of lifetime major depression have been reported among women (11.7%) than men (5.6%).³
• Examining ethnic differences reveals lifetime percentages of depression of 6.52% among whites and 4.57% among blacks and 5.17% among Hispanics.⁴

Anxiety:

• Anxiety disorders, which include panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias, and separation anxiety disorder, are the most common class of mental disorders present in the general population.⁵
• The estimated lifetime prevalence of any anxiety disorder is over 15%, while the 12-month prevalence is more than 10%.⁵
• Prevalence estimates of anxiety disorders are generally higher in developed countries than in developing countries.⁵
• Most anxiety disorders are more prevalent in women than in men.⁶
• One study estimated the annual cost of anxiety disorders in the United States to be approximately $42.3 billion in the 1990s, a majority of which was due to non-psychiatric medical treatment costs. This estimate focused on short-term effects and did not include the effect of outcomes such as the increased risk of other disorders.⁷

Bipolar Disorder:

• The National Comorbidity Study reported a lifetime prevalence of nearly 4% for bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is more common in women than men, with a ratio of approximately 3:2. The median age of onset for bipolar disorder is 25 years,⁸ with men having an earlier age of onset than women.⁸
• In an insured population, 7.5% of all claimants with behavioral health care coverage filed a claim, of which 3.0% had bipolar disorder.⁹ Persons with bipolar disorder incurred $568 in annual out-of-pocket expenses—more than double the expenses incurred by all claimants. Annual insurance payments were greater for medical services for persons with bipolar disorder than for patients with other behavioral healthcare diagnoses.⁹
• The inpatient hospitalization rate of bipolar patients (39.1%) was greater than the 4.5% characterizing all other patients with behavioral health care diagnoses.
• Bipolar disorder has been deemed the most expensive behavioral health care diagnosis,⁹ costing more than twice as much as depression per affected individual.¹⁰ Total costs largely arise from indirect costs and are attributable to lost productivity, in turn arising from absenteeism and presenteeism.¹⁰
• For every dollar allocated to outpatient care for persons with bipolar disorder, $1.80 is spent on inpatient care, suggesting early intervention and improved prevention management could decrease the financial impact of this illness.⁹

Schizophrenia:

• Worldwide prevalence estimates range between 0.5% and 1%. Age of first episode is typically younger among men (about 21 years of age) than women (27 years). Of persons with schizophrenia, by age 30, 9 out of 10 men, but only 2 out of 10 women, will manifest the illness.¹¹
• Persons with schizophrenia pose a high risk for suicide. Approximately one-third will attempt suicide and, eventually, about 1 out of 10 will take their own lives.¹¹
• A Canadian study found that the direct health care and non-health care costs of schizophrenia were estimated to be 2.02 billion Canadian dollars in 2004. This, combined with a high unemployment rate due to schizophrenia and an added productivity and morbidity and mortality loss of 4.83 billion Canadian dollars, yielded a total cost estimate of 6.85 billion in U.S. and Canadian dollars.¹²
• The economic burden of schizophrenia is particularly great during the first year following the index episode, relative to the third year onwards. This finding suggests the need for improved monitoring of persons with schizophrenia upon initial diagnosis.¹³

Frequent Mental Distress:

Frequent mental distress is defined based on the response to the following quality of life question, ‘‘Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good?’’ Frequent mental distress is identified as a report of 14 or more days of poor mental health in the past 30 days.

• 9.4% of U.S. adults experienced Frequent Mental Distress (FMD) for the combined periods 1993-2001 and 2003-2006.¹⁴
• The Appalachian and the Mississippi Valley regions had high and increasing FMD prevalence, and the upper Midwest had low and decreasing FMD prevalence during this same time period.¹⁴

Alzheimer’s Disease:

• Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and is the fifth leading cause among persons age 65 years and older.¹⁵
• Up to 5.3 million Americans currently have Alzheimer’s disease.¹⁶
• By 2050, the number is expected to more than double due to the aging of the population.¹⁶

The psychology behind happiness – how positive affect is quantified and what influences happiness.

Just how happy are you? Do you ever wish for a life that brought more moments to be joyful?

Happiness is often an elusive experience – people will go to great lengths for a fleeting moment of happiness. Even the U.S. Declaration of Independence, written in 1776, asserts the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

But what precisely is happiness – how can it be quantified, and is there any measurable benefit to possessing a happy mindset over that of a more stoic realist?

“Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.”
G.K. Chesterton, English author (1874-1936)

Happiness is a subjective experience – what brings elation to one person will not necessarily satisfy another – but from a psychological viewpoint, we must be able to quantify this state of mind in order to understand it.

When we discuss happiness, we are referring to a person’s enjoyment or satisfaction, which may last just a few moments or extend over the period of a lifetime. Happiness does not have to be expressed in order to be enjoyed – it is an internalized experience, varying in degrees, from mild satisfaction to wild euphoria.

Psychologists often refer to happiness as positive affect – a mood or emotional state which is brought about by generally positive thoughts and feelings. Positive affect contrasts with low moods and negativity, a state of mind described as negative affect in which people take a pessimistic view of their achievements, life situation and future prospects.

Quantifying Happiness

With positive affect being subjective and relative to the individual, can happiness be measured? The United Nations seems to believe that it can, and releases the World Happiness Report, which ranks countries by the self-reported happiness of its citizens.

In 2016, the report listed Denmark as the happiest nation, followed by Switzerland and Iceland. The US was the 13th happiest country with the UK ranking 23rd. Nordic countries feature prominently as being amongst the happiest societies in the world (Helliwell, Layard and Sachs, 2016).¹

The World Happiness Report measured happiness levels using the Cantril Ladder, a scale devised by U.S. psychologist Hadley Cantril (1906-1969). Participants are asked to imagine a ladder with 10 rungs, with rung number 1 representing the worst life imaginable, working upto the optimal life represented by the ladder’s highest rung. They are then asked to identify the step number that they feel reflects their life situation, either at present, in the past or how they envisage it to be in the future (Cantril, 1965).²

The four happiest countries identified by the World Happiness Report placed themselves at 7.5 or higher on the Cantril Ladder (Helliwell, Layard and Sachs, 2016).¹

Given that these countries are highly developed and prosperous, it is easy to assume that positive affect is linked to wealth. A common wish in our modern age is to possess more money: wealth can signify success and increases a person’s purchasing power, giving them choices that they might not have been able to make before. But can money buy happiness?

It’s a question that troubles not only psychologists, but economists, too. Richard Easterlin, a professor of economics at the University of Southern California, noticed a strange paradox involving money and happiness. Should a positive correlation exist between the two, we might expect citizens of developed countries to be happier than those of less prosperous nations.

Easterlin discovered that this is not the case – rich people within countries tend to be happier than the poorest in the same country, but overall, more prosperous countries are no happier than their poorer counterparts. These findings, known as the Easterlin paradox, contradict popular assumptions that wealthy people enjoy happier lives.

A study of lottery winners and victims of serious accidents delved further into the link between money and happiness. The happiness of 22 winners of large lottery prizes was compared to that of both controls and 29 people who had been paralysed as a result of an accident. The level of happiness experienced by winning the lottery had numbed people to the smaller joys of everyday live – a resistance the researchers described as “habitation”, as only more significant events could bring the winners joy (Brickman, Coates, Janoff-Bulman, 1978).³

The results of these two studies suggest that money alone cannot bring people lasting happiness.

Why it Matters: Benefits of Happiness

Happiness signifies an increased enjoyment of life, which is of course beneficial in itself. But beyond this obvious advantage, are there any further gains to be had from increased happiness?

One study looked at wide-ranging research into happiness to better understand the link between happiness in successful people.

Researchers suggested that there may be a causal link between positive affect and success – that success not only brings happiness, but that a person who is happy has an higher chance of achieving success than somebody experiencing negative affect (Lyubomirsky et al, 2005).⁴

The findings of this research support another, earlier, study by Daubman and Nowicki (1987) which artificially induced positive affect in participants in a series of experiments by subjecting them to watching comic films and providing them with sweets.

Subjects were then timed whilst they completed an exercise in creative problem-solving. The researchers found that those in a state of positive affect were able to solve the problems quicker than those in a neutral state or those experiencing negative affect (Daubman and Nowicki, 1987).⁵ Positive affect prior to success, it appears, boosts our intuitive abilities and enables us to achieve more.

Do Happier People Live Longer?

Can happiness lead to a healthier, longer life? Koopmans et al (2010) conducted a 15-year longitudinal study into the happiness of elderly people, known as the Arnhem Elderly Study. They found higher levels of happiness in those who lived longer.⁶

But does happiness lead to a longer life or does good health and longevity give people reason to be happier? The researchers also accounted for the participants’ levels of physical activity and found that, once exercise was accounted for, the link between happiness and life span was insignificant. This indicates that happiness may lead to increased physical activity, which in turn can be beneficial.

Indeed, a 2011 study suggested that exercise in sedentary males could be increased by first boosting their positive affect levels (Baruth, 2011).⁷

Encouraging Happiness

Book store shelves are awash with self-help books claiming to nurture happiness – but is positive affect something that we can nurture, or as the World Happiness Report emphasises, is influenced by our environment and life circumstances, often beyond our control?

Let’s look at some factors which can influence and encourage positive affect:

Acts of Kindness

Contradicting the idea that possessions can bring happiness, giving to others may in fact be more beneficial in terms of positive affect. Stephen Post (2005) noted that, whilst citizens in the US and Europe are more wealthy than previous generations, we are no happier as a result. Post emphasizes the personal benefit that acts of altruism – selfless giving or assistance – can provide (Post, 2005).⁸

The effect of selflessness on happiness was further supported by a 2008 experiment in which participants were given a gift of $5 or $20 and instructed to either spend it on themselves or on other people. Whilst the amount of money received had no notable effect on happiness, participants who gave away the money experienced elevated positive affect following the experiment (Dunn et al, 2008).⁹

Relationships

Familial relationships and friendships affect happiness and can also be impacted by a person’s levels of positive affect. Our ability to make friends often affects our self-esteem – unsurprisingly, people with extrovert personalities have been to found to enjoy higher levels of happiness than introverts (Argyle and Lu, 1990).¹⁰

The contagiousness of happiness is not limited to direct relationships: it can influence the happiness of people by up to 3 degrees of separation from the original individual¹¹

A 20-year study of interpersonal relationships demonstrated just how important the happiness of a person’s friends and family is to their own wellbeing.

Between 1983 and 2003, James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis looked relationships between close relatives and found that the happiness of a friend or close family member who lives up to a mile away from a person can boost their prospects of happiness by around 25%.

The study also suggests that the contagiousness of happiness is not limited to direct relationships: it can influence the happiness of people by up to 3 degrees of separation from the original individual (Fowler and Christakis, 2008).¹¹

Spousal relationships can be of particular influence on happiness levels. A study across 17 countries found that marriage does tend to lead to increased levels of happiness. Cohabiting also boosts happiness but by a lesser degree than marriage. The research emphasises the secondary effects of matrimony, such as the emotional and financial support provided by a partner, may explain this change rather than the act of marriage itself (Stack and Eshleman, 1998).¹²

Self-Determined Happiness

Positive affect might be influenced by external factors in our everyday life, but if people yearn for more happiness, can they bring it about themselves? Schütz et al (2013) studied the habits and happiness of people whose affect levels varied. The study observed a number of ways in which some people were able to proactively nurture their own happiness:¹³

The self-fulfilling participants showed significantly higher results than all other profiles on the direct attempts strategy, suggesting that in order to increase their happiness the self-fulfilling individuals are more prone to directly attempt to smile, get themselves in a happy mood, improve their social skills, and work on their self-control.

What someone’s eyes can tell you about what they’re thinking.

They’ve existed for 540 million years and most of us have a pair, but aside from giving us sight, what can we tell from looking at someone’s eyes?

People say that the eyes are a “window to the soul” – that they can tell us much about a person just by gazing into them. Given that we cannot, for example, control the size of our pupils, body language experts can deduce much of a person’s state by factors relating to the eyes.

The Pupils

The pupils are a part of our body language that we practically have no control over.

As well as adjusting the amount of light taken in the process of sight (Dilation: pupil size increasing; Contracting: pupil size decreasing), Eckhard Hess (1975) found that the pupil dilates when we are interested in the person we’re talking to or the object we’re looking at.

As an indicator, check a friend’s pupil size when you’re talking to them about something interesting, then change the subject to something less interesting and watch their pupils contract!

Eye Contact

For making contact and communicating with a person, effective eye contact is essential to our every day interaction with people, and also to those who want to be effective communicators in the public arena:

Persistent eye contact

Generally in Western societies and many other cultures, eye contact with a person is expected to be regular but not overly persistent. Constant eye contact is often considered to be an attempt at intimidation, causing the person who’s the object of a person’s gaze to feel overly studied and uncomfortable.

Even between humans and non-humans, persistent eye contact is sometimes unadvisable: the New Zealand Medical Journal reported that one reason so many young children fall victim to attacks by pet dogs is their over-poweringly regular eye contact with pets, which causes them to feel threatened and defensive.

Overly persistent eye contact is also a sign of a person’s over-awareness of the messages they are emmiting. In the case of a person who is try to deceive someone, they may distort their eye contact so that they’re not avoiding it – a widely recognised indicator of lying.

Avoiding Eye Contact

Why do we avoid looking at a person? It may be because we feel ashamed to be looking at them if we’re being dishonest of trying to deceive them. However, Scotland’s University of Stirling found that, in a question-and-answer study among children, those who maintained eye contact were less likely to come up with the correct answer to a question than those who looked away to consider their response.

Eye contact, as a socialising device, can take a surprising amount of effort to maintain when this energy could be spend on calculating, as opposed to perceptive, tasks.

Crying

In most cultures around the world, crying is considered to be caused by an extreme experience of emotion; usually, it’s associated with sadness or grief, though often extreme experiences of happiness, and through humor, can cause us to cry. Often, forced crying in order to gain sympathy or deceive others is known as “crocodile tears” – an expression from myths of crocodiles ‘crying’ when catching prey.

Blinking

Aside from our instinctive need to blink, our emotions and feelings towards the person we’re talking to can cause us to subconciously alter our blink rate.

Blinking more than the average 6-10 times per minute (see right) can be a good indicator that a person is attracted to the person they’re talking to, and is for this reason used as a sign of flirting.

Winking

In the West, we consider winking to be a cheeky form of flirting – something we do with people that we know or are on good terms with. However, there are cross-cultural variations on the issue of winking: some Asian cultures frown up on the use of this form of facial expression.²

Eye Direction

What does the direction that someone looking in tell us about what they’re thinking or feeling? Well, probably just what they’re looking at.

The thing to look out for is the direction someone’s eyes are looking in when they’re thinking. Looking to their left indicates that they’re reminiscing or trying to remember something. On the other hand, looking to their right indicates more creative thoughts, and this is often interpreted as a potential sign that someone may be being deceitful in some situations, i.e. creating a version of events.

Note: if a person is left handed, the direction indicators may be reversed.

Eye Reading Summary

From the findings above, what’s the best way to convey a “positive you” using eye contact? If you want to show you’re interested in what someone has to say, make eye contact often, but remember that unblinking stares are disconcerting.

Researchers have found that when people are engaged in an interesting conversation, their eyes remain focused on their partner’s face about 80% of the time – but not exclusively on the eyes. Instead, they focus on the eyes for two to three minutes, then move down to the nose or lips, then back up to the eyes. Occasionally, they look down to the table momentarily, then back up to the eyes.

Avoid looking up and to the right – it’s a universal symbol of boredom and dismissal.

Also remember the following key points with regards to eye contact:

• Demonstrate that you’re interested and active in interacting with someone by maintaining regular intervals of eye contact, but remember that contant eye contact can be intimidating.
• Pupil dilation can indicate someone is interested; it could, alternatively, be that the room has become brighter.
• Wink sparingly, even in cultures you know accept such a gesture in jest.
• Avoid “crocodile tears” if you want to be considered trustworthy by your peers.

Introduction to the cognitive approach in psychology. Explanation and evaluation of this approach.

The Cognitive Approach in psychology is a relatively modern approach to human behaviour that focuses on how we think, with the belief that such thought processes affect the way in which we behave (other approaches take other factors into account, such as the biological approach, which acknowledges the influences of genetics and chemical imbalances on our behaviour).

What it is and where the cognitive approach came from

1. Stimulus (External Factor)
2. affects:
3. Response (Human Behavior)

There is some dispute as to who created the cognitive approach, but some sources attribute the term to the 1950s and 1960s, with Ulric Neisser’s book Cognitive Psychology, which made allusions of the human mind working in a similar fashion to computers. The approach came about in part due to the dissatisfaction with the behavioural approach, which focused on our visible behaviour without understanding the internal processes that create it. The approach is based on the principle that our behaviour is generated by a series of stimuli and responses to these by thought processes.

Comparison to other approaches

Cognitive (meaning “knowing”) psychologists attempt to create rules and explanations of human behavior and eventually generalise them to everyone’s behaviour. The Humanistic Approach opposes this, taking into account individual differences that make us each behave differently. The cognitive approach attempts to apply a scientific approach to human behaviour, which is reductionist in that it doesn’t necessarily take into account such differences. However, popular case studies of individual behaviour such as HM have lead cognitive psychology to take into account ideosynchracies of our behaviour. On the other hand, cognitive psychology acknowledges the thought process that goes into our behaviour, and the different moods that we experience that can impact on the way we respond to circumstances.

Key Assumptions

• Human behaviour can be explained as a set of scientific processes.
• Our behaviour can be explained as a series of responses to external stimuli.
• Behaviour is controlled by our own thought processes, as opposed to genetic factors.

Evaluation of the Cognitive Approach

Are mental illnesses becoming more prevalent, or is psychiatry overdiagnosing?

By Dulce Zamora
WebMD Feature

Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario

In the span of a few months, Jacqueline Castine went from making $2,000 as a motivational speaker to getting fired from a minimum-wage post office job. She had successfully promoted a book on career enhancement, but then years later, was cleaning houses because she couldn’t hold jobs elsewhere.

The Michigan resident’s highs and lows came to a head when, as a sales manager for a Detroit broadcasting outlet, she had a grand delusion that God was telling her to bankroll one of the station’s charitable events.

The result: Castine ended up with a $43,000 credit card debt and thoughts of suicide.

“It was as if the bubble of unreality and distorted thinking had (burst),” says Castine, noting periods of despair coexisting with moments of great creativity. She sought psychiatric help and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression.

Mental Disorders Are Common

Castine’s story may seem unique, but millions of Americans share her plight. According to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, 3.7% of American adults have bipolar disorder, and 4 out of 5 of those who have it may not know it.

In the bigger picture of psychological illness, the statistics may be even more alarming. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) reports that roughly 22% of U.S. adults — about one in five — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. According to the NIMH, about 1% of the population age 18 and older in any given year has bipolar disorder.

The numbers, however, may vary depending on the diagnostic criteria used by researchers, says William Narrow, MD, associate director of the division of research at the American Psychiatric Association (APA). He was part of the study that came up with the 22% figure cited by the NIMH.

That number, he says, may include people who may have a mild disorder — those who may benefit from preventative treatment to keep symptoms from impairing their lives.

After reanalyzing the data, Narrow says the number of Americans with a mental disorder is closer to 15% in all ages. “I think it’s more realistic in terms of who needs treatment acutely,” he says.

Nonetheless, Narrow’s study and several others indicate that psychological illnesses are common, and there is evidence that the problem may be growing.

Mental disorders account for a significant burden of disease in all societies. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects that mental disorders will increase from nearly 12% of the all diseases worldwide to almost 15% by the year 2020.

The statistics have experts emphasizing the need for more awareness and treatment, and skeptics blaming psychiatry for going overboard with overdiagnosing ordinary problems.

The debate unearths the contentious issue of where to draw the line between what is normal behavior and what is considered part of a mental illness.

A Different World

There is dispute over whether a greater number of people have psychological illnesses now compared with past generations, or whether there is just more awareness of the subject and more folks are diagnosed.

Some experts say depression and anxiety boost the number of people with mental disorders.

“Depression and anxiety are the common colds of the psychiatric field in that they come and go without getting treatment,” says C. David Jenkins, PhD, adjunct professor of epidemiology and psychiatry for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By analogy, he says the number of respiratory illness would rise if the number of people with the common cold were included.

In his study of air traffic controllers, Jenkins found many of them met the criteria for depression or anxiety for a month or two, and then they would “straighten up, and feel a lot better, until maybe six to eight months later when they would have another month that was a little low.”

Yet these mood disorders — depression and anxiety — do not always “come and go” so easily. Without treatment, the disorders can prevent people from living productive lives, says Kathy HoganBruen, PhD, senior director of prevention for the National Mental Health Association.

HoganBruen says she is not sure why the mental disorder numbers are so high, but she’s not surprised that they are. “In our society, there are lots of potential stressors,” she says, pointing to the uncertain economy, terrorism , worries about parenting, and health care as part of the gamut of concerns.

Indeed, the stress-related version of mental illness is what’s on the rise, says Ron Kessler, PhD, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, distinguishing between conditions such as depression and anxiety (which are mostly caused by biological and environmental factors), and what he says are largely genetic conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The global rates of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have, for the most part, not changed, says Kessler, while depression and anxiety disorders are more common.

He says urbanization probably had a role in the rise of stress-related mental disorders. “People are moving to cities, moving far away from where their parents lived, and having jobs that their fathers didn’t have before,” says Kessler.

Urbanization, according to the WHO, is accompanied by increased homelessness, poverty, overcrowding, disruption of family structure, and loss of social support, all of which are risks for mental disorders.

With the uncertainty of the future and fewer family and community ties to help deal with problems, Kessler says more people become anxious, breeding secondary depression, and the two are associated with drinking and using drugs.

“That triumvirate of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse — those are the ones that are changing,” he says. “There’s a lot of thinking that anxiety is right at the core of it. That’s sort of the foundation.”

Anxiety may also be heightened by other factors related to modern society, such as globalization and more advanced technology.

“Right now the whole world is at our fingertips, no further away than the television screen, and I believe we get churned up, and our view of everything going to the dogs is heightened by our easy access to all this information,” says Jenkins.

At the same time, he says expectations now are higher than they were many years ago. People now expect to have jobs, enough money to go to a dinner and movie, and many kids expect to have a cell phone in high school and a car at graduation.

Shades of Gray

What type of behavior is considered normal and what classifies as a mental disorder? When is it appropriate to treat a problem with drugs? These questions often spark controversy in and out of the psychiatric field.

The 1999 U.S. Surgeon General’s report on mental health defines mental disorders as “health conditions that are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior (or some combination thereof) associated with distress and/or impaired functioning.”

Critics, however, have questioned the extent to which psychiatry has labeled thinking, mood, and behavior. There are charges of overdiagnosing people and “medicalizing” troublesome characteristics, thoughts, and actions.

The criticism seems to intensify when kids are involved and when prescribing them drugs is at issue.

In 1996, the United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board raised concern about the increasing use of the stimulant Ritalin for the treatment of ADHD in children, particularly in the U.S. Authorities reporting to the board said the disorder may be diagnosed too often and the stimulant prescribed without considering other types of treatment.

Many mental health professionals have little doubt that there are people who are either misdiagnosed, overdiagnosed, or given drugs too easily.

Yet the much bigger problem, says HoganBruen, is that people who need help are not being assessed or treated for mental health disorders.

The exact point when normal problems become a disorder needing treatment is apparently tough to figure out, even with the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) — the reference guide used by professionals to classify psychiatric symptoms.

“There is a continuum between normal behavior and abnormal behavior for a lot of different symptoms,” says Narrow. Nonetheless, psychiatrists make diagnoses the best they can by considering how severe symptoms are and how much they impair daily life.

Sometimes medicine draws the illness line at the point where doctors know how to treat, suggests Kessler. “If it turned out that some pill was developed tomorrow … and it would make (problems) go away … we would declare it in an illness, and we would start treating it,” he says.

While psychiatry continues to search for more effective treatments and a better understanding of mental disorders, there are some remedies – including drugs — that are scientifically proven to work.

Kids with ADHD who receive treatment are less likely later in life to get divorced, be on welfare, get into trouble with the law, or be dead, says Kessler.

Mental illness is and always has been a burden on society, even though the problem was not discussed as openly in the past, says Narrow.

According to the WHO, estimates from the year 2000 have placed mental disorders as six of the top 20 leading causes of disabilities worldwide.

Among children, the APA reports that ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed mental health condition in the U.S. According to the Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health, ADHD afflicts between 3% and 5% of school-age children in any six month period.

As bleak as the reports may seem, HoganBruen says there is effective treatment and it’s possible, with treatment, to lead productive lives.

A Brighter Outlook

Castine says she didn’t think there was anything to live for when she lost all her money while suffering with bipolar disorder. But after taking medication and working with a therapist, she was able to find a job as a community education specialist, publicly speaking about her personal experiences with mental illness.

The 63-year-old now has plenty of savings in the bank and hopes to earn enough for retirement from the publication of her next book, due out this summer.

If you suspect that you or a loved one might have a mental disorder, experts suggest a visit to a primary care doctor or a mental health professional.