1.17 Billion People Worldwide Suffer from a Mental Disorder

Mental disorders can lead to profound suffering in affected people and their families, and societies worldwide have to take measures to prevent and treat them. It is important to know how many people suffer from specific mental disorders so that it can, for example, be estimated how many clinics and therapists are needed.

The data for the last global study on how many people worldwide suffer from mental disorders was collected before the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, it can be assumed that these data are not up to date anymore and that the numbers today are actually higher, since many people faced mental health challenges during the pandemic. Therefore, an updated estimate of the worldwide number of people suffering from mental disorders is needed.

A new study on how many people suffer from mental disorders

Now, a new study entitled “Updated Trends in the Global Prevalence and Burden of Mental Disorders, 1990-2023: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023” was published in the prestigious scientific journal The Lancet (GBD 2023 Mental Disorder Collaborators, 2026). In the study, data for 12 different mental disorders were collected from studies that were conducted in 204 countries:

• anxiety
• depression
• dysthymia (a chronic, low-grade disorder similar to depression)
• bipolar disorder
• schizophrenia
• the autism spectrum
• conduct disorder
• attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
• anorexia nervosa
• bulimia nervosa
• idiopathic developmental intellectual disability
• other mental disorders (a category that included all other forms of mental disorders)

For each disorder, the scientists used advanced statistical models to estimate how many people in the population suffered from it, how many years people lived with disability because of this disorder, and how many years of their lives they lost because of the disorder. The scientists also included data on age, sex, geographical region, and time point of data collection.

Results of the study: Globally, 1.17 billion people suffer from mental disorders

The results of the study showed that in 2023, an estimated 1.17 billion people (620 million females and 552 million males) suffered from mental disorders worldwide. This translates to roughly 14 in 100 people. The most common form of mental disorder was anxiety (about 6 people in 100), followed by depression (about 3 people in 100). The rarest mental disorders were schizophrenia and eating disorders. Overall, using these modeling methods, mental disorders were responsible for 171 million years in which people could not work because of a disability caused by mental disorders. Interestingly, the peak burden of mental health disorders occurred in young people aged 15 to 19 years. Countries also differed in terms of the burden of mental disorders. The highest overall numbers were found in the Netherlands, the lowest in Vietnam.

The scientists compared these results from 2023 to 1990, and the results were alarming. In 1990, 599 million people worldwide suffered from mental disorders. Therefore, there was an 95.5% increase in mental disorders between 1990 and 2023, showing that more and more people suffer from mental disorders. There was an increase in all 12 disorders, but this increase was especially strong for anxiety and depression. This suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic had a strong negative effect on mental health.

Take-Away: The Enormous Challenge Ahead

Taken together, the results of the study clearly showed that more and more people suffer from mental disorders. All countries need to improve prevention and treatment strategies to deal with the enormous challenge for health care systems.