By the Numbers: 11 December 2017

By the Numbers: 11 December 2017

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18.3%

The percentage of U.S. adults age 18+ who had "any mental illness" in 2016, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). This comprises 44.7 million adults. Roughly 10.4 million adults had "a serious mental illness " (4.2%), and 35 million "received mental health care" (14.4%).
Other data points of interest:
In 2016:

  • An estimated 9.8 million adults aged 18 or older reported they had thought seriously about trying to kill themselves, 2.8 million reported that they had made suicide plans, and 1.3 million made a nonfatal suicide attempt.
  • An estimated 51.3 million people aged 12 or older were current cigarette smokers, including 29.7 million who were daily cigarette smokers and 12.2 million who smoked approximately a pack or more of cigarettes per day.
  • About 1 in 5 underage individuals aged 12 to 20 were current alcohol users. About 7.3 million people aged 12 to 20 reported drinking alcohol in the past month, including 4.5 million who reported binge alcohol use and 1.1 million who reported heavy alcohol use.
  • 28.6 million people aged 12 or older used an illicit drug in the past 30 days, which corresponds to about 1 in 10 Americans overall (10.6 percent) but ranges as high as 1 in 4 for young adults aged 18 to 25. (Mostly marijuana and misuse of prescription drugs).
  • 12.8 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 (3.1 million adolescents) and 10.9 percent of young adults aged 18 to 25 (3.7 million) had a major depressive episode during the past year.
  • Note that the annual NSDUH "excludes people with no fixed address (e.g., homeless people not in shelters), military personnel on active duty, and residents of institutional group quarters, such as jails, nursing homes, mental institutions, and long-term care hospitals."

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