Mental illness can worsen chronic diseases, CDC warns

Mental illness worsens the effects of chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report that urged better surveillance of depression and anxiety disorders.

People with mental illnesses are less likely to seek medical care and stick to treatments for chronic physical diseases, according to research published in the Atlanta- based CDC's Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report.

The report is the CDC's first compilation of data from at least eight surveillance systems that track the prevalence of psychiatric conditions among U.S. adults, the agency said in a statement.

Mental illness accounted for $100 billion in U.S. health care spending in 2003 and will strike almost half of all Americans at some point in their lifetimes, the researchers said.

“We know that mental illness is an important public health problem in itself and is also associated with chronic medical diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer,” Ileana Arias, the CDC's principal deputy director, said in the statement.

Expanded surveillance would help the agency strengthen its prevention efforts, she said.

The report compiled data from U.S. government surveys conducted between 2001 and 2009.

Depression is most common in Mississippi and West Virginia, affecting 14 percent of adults in each state, according to the report. North Dakota has the lowest depression rate, at 4.3 percent.

Most CDC surveys on mental health focus on depression and don't provide enough data on anxiety disorders such as obsessive-compulsive and panic disorders, according to the report. In a 2008 survey of more than 91,000 U.S. adults, 16 percent of respondents said they had been diagnosed with depression in their lifetimes and 12 percent said they'd been diagnosed with anxiety, according to the report.

“Anxiety disorders are as common in the population as depression” and are often linked to the same chronic illnesses, according to the report.

“Future mental illness surveillance surveys should measure both depression and anxiety disorders and include more detailed questions concerning their impact on quality of life, associated chronic medical conditions, and issues such as family violence, alcohol and substance abuse, and access to and use of health care,” the authors said.