Mental Illness Around the World

According to the World Health Organization, one in thirteen globally suffers from anxiety. In the United States, one in five adults have a mental health condition. That’s over forty million Americans; more than the populations of New York and Florida combined. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide (emphasis mine).

Almost 75 percent of people with mental disorders remain untreated in developing countries, with almost one million people taking their lives each year. Studies also reveal that loneliness has become an epidemic affecting over half the population in the United States. Those numbers are staggering. In the Independent, Alex Williams writes, “Anxiety is starting to seem like a sociological condition, too: a shared cultural experience that feeds on alarmist CNN graphics and metastasizes through social media.

Shelly Miller, Searching for Certainty: Finding God in the Disruptions of Life, Bethany House Publishers, 2020.