送交者: Latino2 于 2005-6-07, 09:37:01:
U.S. Mental Health Holding Steady, says Survey
A nationwide psychological survey indicates that the mental health of Americans hasn't gotten any worse over the past decade. Still, some 6% of the population has mental illnesses that are "seriously debilitating," which makes the U.S. sicker psychologically than other developed nations.
The new study, called the National Comorbidity Survey Replication and conducted by the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), is based on household interviews of 9282 randomly selected adults in 35 states. A similar survey in the early 1990s was the first to assess a nationally representative sample using standardized psychiatric terms.
Study results, published this week in four papers in the Archives of General Psychiatry, reveal that over a lifetime, about 46% of the U.S. population falls prey to some sort of anxiety, mood, impulse control, or substance abuse disorder. Many of the cases documented are mild, temporary, and never require treatment. However, noted Ronald Kessler of Harvard Medical School's Department of Health Care Policy, even mild cases may become more severe and "accumulate" if not treated early. Hence the high rates of comorbidity: 45% of the subjects diagnosed with one disorder also qualified for another. Depression and alcoholism go hand in hand, for example.
The lag time between onset of a problem and treatment is 6 to 8 years for mood disorders and 9 to 23 years for anxiety disorders, the survey found. "These new numbers raise the possibility that the stigma against treatment may be even greater than the stigma against the disorders themselves," said NIMH director Thomas Insel.
Nonetheless, the past decade or so of mental health awareness campaigns and the availability of new drugs have paid off to some degree: 18% of those diagnosed in the study reported getting some treatment in the prior year compared with 13% in the earlier survey. Still, the researchers found that less than one-third of those seeking help had "minimally adequate" care, as defined by guidelines agreed upon by groups such as the American Psychiatric Association.
Despite continued inadequate treatment and long lag times in seeking help, there's a "sea change" occurring in the nation's mental health, said Kessler. "This is the first time we've been able to say there has not been a rise in mental disorders."