About half of U.S. adults will develop a mental illness during their lifetime, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports. The study also finds that that anxiety disorders are apparently as common as depression and as debilitating in terms of their effects on mental and overall health. There are “unacceptably high levels of mental illness in the United States,” said Ileana Arias, principal deputy director of the CDC. The report estimates that the cost associated with mental illness was about $300 billion in 2002. “We know that mental illness is an important public health problem in itself and is also associated with chronic medical diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer,” Arias says in a statement. “The report’s findings indicate that we need to expand surveillance activities that monitor levels of mental illness in the United States in order to strengthen our prevention efforts.” (USA Today, 9/5/11)
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