Jefrey Lizardo

📝 New article on Our World in Data: Around half of people will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime. How many people struggle with mental health issues? International and national health statistics will often give us estimates for how many people have depression, anxiety, or an eating disorder at any given time. But people can develop mental health disorders at any point in their lives, or experience recurring episodes over many years. What share of people will ever experience one? A study by John McGrath and colleagues tries to answer this question by drawing on data from 29 countries and over 150,000 people across the world. By interviewing people at different stages of life, they can build up an understanding of how this risk accumulates over an individual’s life course. They estimate that roughly half of the population will experience one of 13 common mental health disorders by the time they reach 75. Depression is the most common; by the age of 75, one in three women has experienced depression at some point in their lives. One in five men has. For anxiety, the share is similar, as is the gender gap. For substance use disorders, it’s the opposite. In this article, we look at these estimates in more detail and discuss why the true share might be even higher.