CDC: 'Nearly 50% of U.S. Adults Will Develop at Least One Mental Illness'

CDC: 'Nearly 50% of U.S. Adults Will Develop at Least One Mental Illness'

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention says that at any given moment about a quarter of American adults are mentally ill and that over the course of their lifetimes about half of all Americans will develop at least one mental illness.

A CDC mental-health fact sheet--Mental Illness Surveillance Among U.S. Adults--says that "published studies report that about 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime.”

The fact sheet also notes that the authors of a 2011 CDC mental health surveillance report pointed out that "currently, no surveillance efforts at the national or state level are directed toward documenting anxiety disorders." The authors thus call for "initiating national-level anxiety disorder surveillance activities."

This is not only alarming for medical reasons, I for one think it's alarming because they are "recommending" some sort of national surveillance program !!

The "surveillance" is the problem.

With all the recent outings about big corporations in kahootz with the government sharing personal information about Americans, we must wonder what misplaced medical info could do to somebody.

Too many innocent victims are created by nosy, over zealous bureaucrats that are hungry to satisfy their appetites to find out all they can about YOU.

The reports list many things "to look for" and "identify" that sure sound like nazi style snooping.

Think what can happen if a potential or current employer gets the wrong info from some tainted background check service.

Think what could happen if this "mental illness" info gets mis-interpreted by let's say, somebody at FEMA or DHS who has been assigned to "classify" YOU !!

Think what might happen if they initiate a "See Something say Something" program.
Beware: your neighbors might have a mental illness !

Now maybe we know why the IRS has recently been collecting medical data on citizens in bulk.

What is the conspiracy ?

CDC: 'Nearly 50% of U.S. Adults Will Develop at Least One Mental Illness'


Links to zee reportz:
Mental Illness Surveillance Among Adults in the United States

2nd Link pdf

YOU will be "Classified"

I just hope it helps destroy the stigma against people who suffer from mental illness.
Depression is a mental illness, the more people who can identify loved ones who may be suffering from it the better.
Get rid of the stigma many have against people with mental illness and people will accept that it is an illness just like Cancer etc.
I have seen people take the mickey out of people who are mentally ill but never out of someone with Cancer.
The surveillance thing I do not agree with though.
Educate people about it is the way to go.
The 50% may be a little high though the studies I have seen (in the UK) are one in three.

Seems like a sneaky way to implement gun control or reduce the rights of 50% of Americas population.

Having worked for over 30 years in the prison system, I think this number of 50 % is low. Over 80 percent of the incarcerated people suffer from some sort of mental illness. We no longer treat the mentally ill in this country. We simply lock them up. They may have some form of treatment in the prison, in the form of anti-depressants or thorazine or some other drug, perhaps counseling.

Because they are mentally ill and have very real physical symptoms, and because many cannot afford health insurance, they, in turn, self-medicate with drugs, such as alcohol, marijuana, heroin, coc aine, methamphetamine, etc. Of course, these drugs are illegal, and this leads to more prosecution and incarceration, as persecution of illicit drug use is what most police are happiest to engage.

The War on Drugs is also a war on the mentally ill. All brought to you proudly by Big Pharma, only to happy to keep humanity from their yum-yum...

Personally I think we're all a bit mentally ill - as in, there's a spectrum. Some just hide it, or are able to hide it, better than others.

How do you define mental illness, if the medical world cant even explain properly what it is then how do you confidently define it.

Is anyone who doesn't what you be a pre-programmed robot in the system of big industry or society mentally ill? I bet there some people who would think so.

reply to post by xuenchen
I take these sort of statistics with a grain of salt because a lot of things the CDC classifies as mental illness I wouldn't consider classifying as such. I mean really, they consider anyone who doesn't agree with the government on any given issue as suffering from a mental illness!

Considering how crazy the world has gotten- (Just see the tv shows and movies that come out)

Im more worried about the ones that do not suffer from a mental illness.
People with mental disorders are actually responding correctly.

Originally posted by PhoenixOD
Seems like a sneaky way to implement gun control or reduce the rights of 50% of Americas population.

Obamacare has always been about destroying the Constitution by making it constitutionally legal to destroy the Constitution. Only from the inside out can it be destroyed.

So what's considered a "mental illness" these days ?

Going through moments in life where you've been upset ?
Sad ?
Anxious ?
Indecisive ?
Angry ?
Frustrated ?
Made mistakes ?

Then I guess we're all screwed.

Time to start doling out those big pharma meds, apparently.

In 50 years from now, it looks like we'll be living in a combination of the movies "1984" and "Equilibrium"... medicated to the full hilt because we're all nuts and need to be taken care of by Big Brother.

Somebody stop the planet, I want to get off.

reply to post by PhoenixOD

How do you define mental illness, if the medical world cant even explain properly what it is then then how do you confidently define it. Is anyone who doesn't what you be a pre-programmed robot in the system of big industry or society mentally ill? I bet there some people who would think so.

Mental illness is defined.

current version of the DSM characterizes a mental disorder as "a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual [which] is associated with present distress...or disability...or with a significant increased risk of suffering." It also notes that "...no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of 'mental disorder'...different situations call for different definitions". It states that "there is no assumption that each category of mental disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries dividing it from other mental disorders or from no mental disorder" (APA, 1994 and 2000). There are attempts to adjust the wording for the upcoming DSM-V.[4][5]

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders. The DSM is used in the United States and to various degrees around the world. It is used or relied upon by clinicians, researchers, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, the legal system, and policy makers. The current version, published on May 18, 2013, is the DSM-5 (fifth edition).

The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), produced by the World Health Organization (WHO), is another commonly used manual which includes criteria for mental disorders. This is in fact the official diagnostic system for mental disorders in the US, but is used more widely in Europe and other parts of the world. The coding system used in the DSM is designed to correspond with the codes used in the ICD, although not all codes may match at all times because the two publications are not revised synchronously.

The DSM has attracted praise for standardizing psychiatric diagnostic categories and criteria. It has also attracted controversy and criticism.

Part of the criticism would be the failure to consistently revise the manual in accordance with the ICD...

The field of science regarding mental disorders is, by comparison, relatively young (think Freud).

The initial impetus for developing a classification of mental disorders in the United States was the need to collect statistical information. The first official attempt was the 1840 census which used a single category, "idiocy/insanity". In 1917, a Committee on Statistics from what is now known as the American Psychiatric Association (APA), together with the National Commission on Mental Hygiene, developed a new guide for mental hospitals called the "Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane", which included 22 diagnoses. This was subsequently revised several times by APA over the years. APA, along with the New York Academy of Medicine, also provided the psychiatric nomenclature subsection of the US medical guide, the Standard Classified Nomenclature of Disease, referred to as the "Standard".[6]

As such, I think there is a lot left to be discovered and learned...as do these professionals...do these people have an axe to grind? I do not know, but there is a lot of disagreement within the field...

ETA: Please, I encourage everyone to take a thorough look at the cchr.org website as it offers much in regard to the topic, study, and analysis, of mental health and wellness...much of it FREE OF CHARGE!!!

I would think that everyone has a bout with something that their brains/emotions aren't equipped to handle at some point in their lives. That's not my psychology degree talking ... that's my personal observations.

S&F for you ... LMFAO..... ...... All I can say is that I'm not sick; just not well .......

today we could classify any police officer as paranoid by the way they do their job. I remember the searches during marshal law in Boston and how the police claimed... they might be terrorists lurking in them homes.....

is Obama mentally ill allowing the mass surveillance of Americans?

Thing is you can suffer from mental illness and still live a full normal life, to me mental illness becomes bad when it effects yourself in ways which eventually will do you harm or others around you.
You do not have to get pumped full of drugs to solve your mental health problems, just talking about how you feel can do wonders.
I used to work in mental health which eventually effected my own mental health so I had to give up my job, I went to therapy once a week for a few months and It did wonders.

Originally posted by fnpmitchreturns
S&F for you ... LMFAO..... ...... All I can say is that I'm not sick; just not well .......

today we could classify any police officer as paranoid by the way they do their job. I remember the searches during marshal law in Boston and how the police claimed... they might be terrorists lurking in them homes.....

is Obama mentally ill allowing the mass surveillance of Americans?

""is Obama mentally ill allowing the mass surveillance of Americans?""

Probably yes, and on other points also

Especially since He promised to end all the snooping.

reply to post by totallackey


ah yes i see they have tried to define it but from the same page :

Dividing lines

Despite caveats in the introduction to the DSM, it has long been argued that its system of classification makes unjustified categorical distinctions between disorders, and uses arbitrary cut-offs between normal and abnormal. A 2009 psychiatric review noted that attempts to demonstrate natural boundaries between related DSM syndromes, or between a common DSM syndrome and normality, have failed.[3] Some argue that rather than a categorical approach, a fully dimensional, spectrum or complaint-oriented approach would better reflect the evidence.

Some psychiatrists also argue that current diagnostic standards rely on an exaggerated interpretation of neurophysiological findings and so understate the scientific importance of social-psychological variables.[56] Advocating a more culturally sensitive approach to psychology, critics such as Carl Bell and Marcello Maviglia contend that the cultural and ethnic diversity of individuals is often discounted by researchers and service providers.[57] In addition, current diagnostic guidelines have been criticized as having a fundamentally Euro-American outlook. Although these guidelines have been widely implemented, opponents argue that even when a diagnostic criteria set is accepted across different cultures, it does not necessarily indicate that the underlying constructs have any validity within those cultures; even reliable application can only demonstrate consistency, not legitimacy.[56] Cross-cultural psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman contends that the Western bias is ironically illustrated in the introduction of cultural factors to the DSM-IV: the fact that disorders or concepts from non-Western or non-mainstream cultures are described as "culture-bound", whereas standard psychiatric diagnoses are given no cultural qualification whatsoever, is to Kleinman revelatory of an underlying assumption that Western cultural phenomena are universal.

Psychiatrist Allen Frances has been critical of proposed revisions to the DSM-5. In a 2012 article, Frances warned that if this DSM version is issued unamended by the APA, it will "medicalize normality and result in a glut of unnecessary and harmful drug prescription."

and on , and on..

reply to post by PhoenixOD


I tmay seem like splitting hairs, but the excerpts you posted do not address the actual definition of mental disorder/illness...it speaks more toward the categories/disorders themselves.

I do not think anyone disputes this definition:

A clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (i.e., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., an impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom. The syndrome or pattern must not be merely an expectable and culturally sanctioned response to a particular event. It must currently be considered a manifestation of a behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunction in the individual. No definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of mental disorder. Also known as mental health, mental impairment, mental illness, brain illness, and serious brain disorder (DSM - IV, 1994; p. xxi).

Again, the fight, even within the field of mental health professionals, is over the amount of categories and how they are delineated!

Originally posted by xuenchen

Originally posted by fnpmitchreturns
S&F for you ... LMFAO..... ...... All I can say is that I'm not sick; just not well .......

today we could classify any police officer as paranoid by the way they do their job. I remember the searches during marshal law in Boston and how the police claimed... they might be terrorists lurking in them homes.....

is Obama mentally ill allowing the mass surveillance of Americans?

""is Obama mentally ill allowing the mass surveillance of Americans?""

Probably yes, and on other points also

Especially since He promised to end all the snooping.

I am afraid Obama, like most politicians, suffer from what could be termed as " Ego Driven Paranoia".
It seems to me, when a person gets to a certain level of power and notarioty, they suddenly forget everything else but feeding their ego by amassing more and more power. They also become so fearful of losing any of this power they will do, or have done, anything and everything to keep it.
This is why they become so dangerous, not only to themselves, but to everyone.

The voices in my head say that I am quite sane.

Except for the one that wants me to give haircuts to emus.

CDC/government just wants everyone crazy and needy!

If most people were sane, they would have no need to rely on any government services.

Well that accounts for Obama derangement syndrome