CDC Mental Illness Surveillance

CDC Report: Mental Illness Surveillance Among U.S. Adults

The economic burden of mental illness in the United States is substantial—about $300 billion in 2002. Mental illness is an important public health problem in itself—about 25% of U.S. adults have a mental illness—but also because it is associated with chronic medical diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity. Mental illness surveillance by organizations such as CDC is a critically important part of disease prevention and control.

For the first time, CDC has compiled data from eight CDC surveillance systems, none of which were designed to focus specifically on mental illness, to better understand the disease burden and to make recommendations about gaps in mental illness surveillance. These systems are the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), National Nursing Home Survey (NNHS), National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS), National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS), and Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS).

The CDC report, Mental Illness Surveillance Among Adults in the United States, describes the extent of mental illness among U.S. adults and recommends increased efforts to monitor mental illness and anxiety disorders. Released in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the publication is the result of CDC's first agency-wide compilation of data from selected CDC surveillance and information systems that measure the prevalence and impact of mental illness in the U.S. adult population.

FIGURE 1. Prevalence of current depression among adults aged ≥18 years, by state quartile — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, United States, 2006

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