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Nearly half a billion people are affected by mental disorders which account for nearly 15% of the disease burden in the world - more than heart disease, lung disease, cancer or diabetes – more than TB, HIV and malaria combined! Yet, the historical neglect and exclusion of mental health from local, regional, national and global agendas continues and the exclusion of the neuropsychiatric disorders from the United Nations High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases represents a major social and economic injustice to the hundreds of millions of citizens suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders who are robbed of the opportunity to reach their life’s potential and are condemned to lives of vulnerability.

In the continuing story of humanity to create a just and equitable world, we have failed too many people everywhere, and poverty, expressed through persistent inequities and social injustices, remains our major failure as humanity. In this poverty story, neuropsychiatric disorders, with its story of economic hardships to those living with mental and neurological illnesses and their caregivers and families, play a critical role in the evolution and persistence of poverty. We must discontinue our penchant for a good talk, but no action.

- Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, Honorable Minister of Health, Guyana

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Prevalence, treatment, and associated disability of mental disorders in four provinces in China during 2001—05: an epidemiological survey

The abstract of an article published in the June 13th, 2009, edition of The Lancet:

By Prof. Michael R. Phillips, MD; Prof. Jingxuan Zhang, MMed; Qichang Shi, BMed; Zhiqiang Song, BMed; Zhijie Ding, BMed; Shutao Pang, MMed; Xianyun Li, MMed; Yali Zhang, MD; and Zhiqing Wang, BMed

Background

In China and other middle-income countries, neuropsychiatric conditions are the most important cause of ill health in men and women, but efforts to scale up mental health services have been hampered by the absence of high-quality, country-specific data for the prevalence, treatment, and associated disability of different types of mental disorders. We therefore estimated these variables from a series of epidemiological studies that were done in four provinces in China.

Methods

We used multistage stratified random sampling methods to identify 96 urban and 267 rural primary sampling sites in four provinces of China; the sampling frame of 113 million individuals aged 18 years or older included 12% of the adult population in China. 63 004 individuals, identified with simple random selection methods at the sampling sites, were screened with an expanded version of the General Health Questionnaire and 16 577 were administered a Chinese version of the Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)-IV axis I disorders by a psychiatrist.

Findings

The adjusted 1-month prevalence of any mental disorder was 17·5% (95% CI 16·6—18·5). The prevalence of mood disorders was 6·1% (5·7—6·6), anxiety disorders was 5·6% (5·0—6·3), substance abuse disorders was 5·9% (5·3—6·5), and psychotic disorders was 1·0% (0·8—1·1). Mood disorders and anxiety disorders were more prevalent in women than in men, and in individuals 40 years and older than in those younger than 40 years. Alcohol use disorders were 48 times more prevalent in men than in women. Rural residents were more likely to have depressive disorders and alcohol dependence than were urban residents. Among individuals with a diagnosable mental illness, 24% were moderately or severely disabled by their illness, 8% had ever sought professional help, and 5% had ever seen a mental health professional.

Interpretation

Substantial differences between our results and prevalence, disability, and treatment rate estimates used in the analysis of global burden of disease for China draw attention to the need for low-income and middle-income countries to do detailed, country-specific situation analyses before they scale up mental health services.

Funding

China Medical Board of New York, WHO, and Shandong Provincial Bureau of Health.

Bold emphasis in the text of the abstract is mine.

Posting of this abstract on the weblog is for the purposes of research into the prevalence and treatment of mental disorders in China.

Also see:

Mental disorders in China underestimated