Tools for Leaders

• One in four adults experiences a mental disorder in any given year. One in seventeen adults has a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder.
• One in 10 children has a mental health condition that causes significant impairment.
• Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, three-quarters by age 24.
• Despite effective treatment, there are long delays--an average of 10 years--from the onset of mental illness to treatment.
• Racial and ethnic communities are less likely to receive needed mental health care and, when they do receive treatment, more likely to receive poorer quality of care.
• Mental illnesses are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada for ages 15-44.
• Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for America's youth ages 15-24.
• Overall, we lose one life to suicide every 15.8 minutes. The vast majority have an undiagnosed or untreated mental illness.
• About 20 - 25 percent of jail and prison inmates and youth involved with juvenile justice have a serious mental illness.
• Twenty-six percent of homeless persons have a severe mental illness--over four times the rate of the general population.
• An estimated 131,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. 45 percent of these veterans live with mental illness.
• For people living with serious mental illnesses, life expectancy is 25 years less than that of other Americans.
• People with schizophrenia die from heart disease, diabetes and other medical causes at a rate two or three times greater than the rest of the population.

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