Word: mental
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...debate with which the U.S. workplace has yet to come to grips: should employees' mental and physical health be considered equal in importance...
Corporate America's answer has traditionally been unambiguous, with few employer-backed health plans offering any coverage for workers' mental conditions. But that line has been shifting recently - a change that could save the U.S. economy billions of dollars in lost income, a new government-funded study suggests...
...Serious mental illnesses (SMIs), which afflict about 6% of American adults, cost society $193.2 billion in lost earnings per year, according to findings published in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry. Surveying data from nearly 5,000 participants, researchers determined that people suffering from a SMI - defined as a range of mood and anxiety disorders, including suicidal tendencies, that significantly impaired a person's ability to function for at least 30 days over the past year - earned at least 40% less than people in good mental health. "The results of this study confirm the belief that mental disorders contribute...
Researchers arrived at that figure using data from the 2002 National Comorbidity Survey Replication, a nationally representative study designed to gauge the overall mental health of Americans, and extrapolated it to the general population. Kessler and his colleagues determined that a person suffering from SMI had earned $23,000 on average in the previous year. Those respondents without SMI averaged nearly $40,000. The researchers attributed 75% of that difference to the person's mental illness. The other 25% was attributed to a greater likelihood that a mentally ill person would not have worked at all, thus earning nothing - Kessler...
Though these figures may seem high, Kessler and his colleagues caution that they are likely too conservative. For one thing, the study's conclusions are based on data from 2002; today, Kessler says, the rate of mental illness is likely higher due to a variety of causes, including the Iraq war starting in 2003. But, more importantly, lost earning potential is only one of the many indirect costs of mental illness in American society. Social Security payments, homelessness and incarceration add to that economic burden, as well as direct costs such as medications and physicians' care. "The actual costs...