Europeans turning their minds to mental health

A STUDY taking in 30 European nations, with populations totalling 514 million, has put the rate of people who experience mental illness every year at 38.2%.

The most frequent disorders were anxiety disorders (14%), insomnia (7%), major depression (6.9%), somatoform disorders (6.3%), alcohol and drug dependence (> 4%), ADHD (5% in children) and dementia (1% in those aged 60–65, 30% in those over 85).

Disorders of the brain – measured in disability-adjusted life years – accounted for 26.6% of the EU’s total morbidity burden.

“We have to acknowledge that early targeted treatment in the young will effectively prevent the risk of increasingly larger proportions of severely ill multi-morbid patients in the future,” the study, released by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, concluded.