Mental health articles

Mental symptoms: 30% of adults experience worry, tension, irritability or sleep disturbance at any time

All mental disorders: >20% of adults at any time suffer mental health problems; 25% of general practice consultations involve mental health problems

Depression (including mixed anxiety and depression): 10% of adults depressed in a week; 55% depressed at some time

Anxiety disorders: >10% of adults have clinically important symptoms (about 5% generalised anxiety, 5–10% phobias, 1% each for obsessive–compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorder)

Suicide: rate in UK falling (now 8/100,000 per year) but rising elsewhere; 4000 deaths and more than 100,000 attempts annually; 5% of all years of life lost in people aged under 75 years

Self-harm: 1 in 600 people harm themselves suffi ciently to require hospital admission; 1% of these go on to kill themselves

Schizophrenia (and other functional psychoses): 0.4% of people living at home; 1% lifetime risk; 10 patients on a typical general practice list, but 10,000 not registered with a general practitioner

Bipolar affective disorder: at least 2% of adults

Personality disorder: 5–10% of young adults

Tags: morbidity, Psychiatric, psychiatric morbidity