Report: Women More Likely Than Men to Have Mental Disorder

• Nearly 30% of young adults -- those aged 18 to 25 -- were estimated to have had a diagnosable disorder. That’s more than any other age group. The estimates for adults between the ages of 26 and 49, and those 50 and over, were 22.1% and 14.3%, respectively.
• Women are more likely than men to have a mental disorder (23% vs. 16.8%); however, mental illness among men is on the rise, according to the survey. In 2009, 15.6% of men had a mental disorder.
• More than a quarter of people of mixed race had some form of mental disorder in 2010, compared to 20.6% among whites and 19.7% among African-Americans. Asians, at 15.8%, had the lowest score, followed by Hispanics at 18.3% and American Indians or Alaska Natives at 18.7%.
• The survey also reports that those below the poverty line had significantly higher rates of mental illness than those with larger incomes.

Those figures cover people who have what SAMHSA refers to as “any mental illness,” or AMI. That means any diagnosable mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder regardless of whether or not it impairs a person’s day-to-day life. For example, someone with an AMI could meet the criteria for depression yet still be able to function normally both at work and at home.
The survey also looked at those with serious mental illness, or SMI. Overall, 11.4 million U.S. adults -- about 5% of the adult population -- had a disorder that greatly impaired their ability to function in daily life. As with AMIs, young adults, women, and those of mixed race were the most likely to have had an SMI during 2010.

Suicide, Major Depression, and Substance Abuse

The number of adults who contemplated or attempted suicide was also tallied. According to the report, 8.7 million Americans seriously considered suicide, and 2.5 million of them made plans to kill themselves. About 1 million adults attempted it.