No kidding! U.S. one of the most depressed countries in the world

Deidre McPhillips
USNews.com
Wed, 14 Sep 2016 10:05 UTC

© Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

India suffers the most years of life lost due to disability or death caused by depression and anxiety.

Mental health issues cut the most years off of life in Asia and the U.S.

The U.S. is one of the most depressed countries in the world, according to the World Health Organization.

In terms of quality years of life lost due to disability or death - a widely adopted public health metric that measures the overall burden of disease - the U.S. ranked third for unipolar depressive disorders, just after India and China.

India, China and the U.S. are also the countries most affected by anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to WHO.

About one in five adults in the U.S. experiences some form of mental illness each year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, but only 41 percent of those affected received mental health care or services in the past year.

In August, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton released a plan to reform the mental health system in the U.S., a favorable step for advocates who have cited issues such as an insufficient number of providers and the expensive costs of medication.

Comment: Not only would the US be healthier without the incredible influence of Big Pharma and over-prescribed medications like SSRI's - but also, no doubt, without the crazy-making, cognitive dissonance-inducing, and war-mongering behavior of Killary and her ilk.

Closing the gap between mental health patients and providers is a global issue.

"In 2014, 45 percent of the world's population lived in a country where there was less than one psychiatrist to serve 100,000 people," according to WHO.

Asia has an especially low concentration of psychiatrists, despite, or perhaps the cause of the region's high overall burden of mental illness. Europe has the highest, led by Monaco, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands, each with between 20 and 40 psychiatrists per 100,000 people. The U.S. and Canada have about 13 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, according to WHO.

Here are the countries with the greatest burden of disease for mental and behavioral disorders, in terms of most years of life lost due to disability or death adjusted for population size, according to WHO.