Impact of Mental Illness
Mental illness can have a wide variety of symptoms and can affect a person’s mood, how they think, and even how they interact with others. This can lead to conflicts with family members, difficulties in relationships, and often social isolation.
Mental illness has a significant impact on all of us. As health care providers, we need to help make mental illness easier to talk about.
1 in 5 U.S. adults
experience mental illness each year.
1 in 20 U.S. adults
experience serious mental illness (SMI) each year.
1 in 6 U.S. youth
ages 6 – 17
experience a mental health disorder each year.
50% of all lifetime mental illness
begins by age 14, and
75% by age 24.
Source: National Alliance on Mental Illness, “Mental Health Conditions,”
The Impact of Mental Illness
- People with depression have a 40% higher risk of developing cardiovascular and metabolic diseases than the general population. People with serious mental illness are nearly twice as likely to develop these conditions.
- 33.5% of U.S. adults with mental illness also experienced a substance use disorder in 2021 (19.4 million individuals).
- The rate of unemployment is higher among U.S. adults who have mental illness (7.4%) compared to those who do not (4.6%).
- High school students with significant symptoms of depression are more than twice as likely to drop out compared to their peers.
- Students ages 6 – 17 with mental, emotional, or behavioral concerns are three times more likely to need to repeat a grade.
- At least 8.4 million people in the U.S. provide care to an adult with a mental or emotional health issue.
- Caregivers of adults with mental or emotional health issues spend an average of 32 hours per week providing unpaid care.
- 21.1% of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. have a serious mental health condition.
- Among people in the U.S. younger than age 18, depressive disorders are the most common cause of hospitalization (after excluding hospitalization relating to pregnancy and birth).
- Among people in the U.S. ages 18 – 44, psychosis spectrum and mood disorders account for nearly 600,000 hospitalizations each year.
- 19.7% of U.S. military veterans experienced a mental illness in 2020 (3.9 million people).
- 9.6% of active service members in the U.S. military experienced a mental health or substance use condition in 2021.
Mental health conditions are more common than we think, mainly because people don’t like to talk about them. AmeriHealth Caritas Florida is here to help start the conversation, so you can provide members with the care they need.
Make it a routine practice to screen for depression. Regular screenings for mental illness and substance use disorders can make a difference.
Learn more about the resources available for the integration of care with these important screening tools:
- Patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9) (PDF) depression screening.
- Behavioral Health Provider Toolkit (PDF) - Adult, Adolescent and Child behavioral health screening assessments for Anxiety Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Depressive Disorders can be found in our Behavioral Health Toolkit, along with Suicide Prevention Practices.
- Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral for Treatment (SBIRT)
- Tools to Screen for Alcohol and Substance Use Disorder