To inform the general public, open the debate on mental health issues, the Mental Health Information Weeks (SISM) are mobilizing from March 10 to 23. Because, in France, one person in 5 is at risk of experiencing mental disorders during their lifetime (depression, anxiety, addiction, eating disorder, schizophrenic disorder, bipolar disorder, etc.), diseases which represent 8% of health expenditure of the French state.
Psychiatric illnesses are the 3rd most common illness
Generalized anxiety, depressionpsychotic disorders, risk of suicide, psychiatric pathologies are after cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
Mental disorders and episodes of mental suffering concern all French people. They affect the population without distinction of age, sex or social background and are associated with high mortality.
” In effect, suicide is the 2nd cause of death among adolescents and causes more than 10,000 deaths each year, or 29 suicides per day. Three times more than road accidents” recall the organizers of the SISM.
“Mental illnesses have a very high prevalence rate. They mobilize more than one point of GDP for the care and daily allowances they require. Through ignorance, mental illnesses are scary. Patients and their families suffer daily. Stigma dissuades sufferers from consulting a specialist, thus delaying diagnosis and increasing the effects of mental illness on individuals and society,” recalls Denys Robiliard, MP for Loir-et-Cher, rapporteur for the Mental Health and Psychiatry Mission, in a press release from SISM.
Psychiatric illnesses are the leading causes of disability and long-term sick leave. “Indeed, these diseases can put the person in a handicap situation, deteriorate their quality of life and that of their loved ones” explains the organizers of the SISM.
Psychiatric illnesses have a real cost
Psychiatric disorders cost the French State 110 billion euros per year broken down as follows: 13.4 billion euros in health expenditure, i.e. 8% of the national health budget, (a figure close to the health expenditure for cancer), 6.3 billion euros in the social and medico-social sector. 2.2 billion euros are paid for drugs.
“But the informal cost of mental pathologies is much higher than the formal expenses directly incurred for psychiatry,” recalls the SISM in a press release.
As their economic and social repercussions are significant (precariousness, exclusion, risky behaviour, addictions), the loss of quality of life costs 65.1 billion and the loss of productivity 24.4 billion euros.
