About Depression and Disability

The idea of "disability" often conjures up images of people confined to wheelchairs and hospital beds because of terrible accidents and rare diseases. But disability often means having vision or back problems, being temporarily sidelined as you recover from a heart attack or cancer – or battling depression or other mental illness.

In fact, major depressive disorder (clinical depression) affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year.* It occurs in women or men of all races, around the world. And while major depressive disorder can develop at any age, the median age at onset is 32.** In addition, for reasons that are not yet understood, it occurs twice as frequently in women.***

According to the 2008 Council for Disability Awareness Long-Term Disability Claims Review, Mental Disorder/Psychiatric claims accounted for 6.4 percent of new claims (approved that year) and 6.3 percent of existing claims (ongoing, but approved in prior years).

According to the U.S. government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, mental health disorders were one of the five most costly conditions in the United States in 2006, with care expenditures rising from $35.2 billion in 1996 to $57.5 billion in 2006.

Mental Health America reminds everyone that “May is Mental Health Month,” a tradition that began in 1949. You can help MHA, the nation’s largest and oldest community-based network dedicated to helping all Americans live mentally healthier lives, by completing the Guardian quiz.

* Kessler RC, Chiu WT, Demler O, Walters EE. Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of twelve-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R). Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005 Jun;62(6):617-27.

** Kessler RC, Berglund PA, Demler O, Jin R, Walters EE. Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Co-morbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R). Archives of General Psychiatry. 2005 Jun;62(6):593-602.

*** Support Partners “Depression and Women’s Health”, 2010