Up to 20% of kids experience mental disorders: CDC report

Up to 1 in 5 children living in the U.S. have mental disorders, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about $247 billion is spent on children's mental health each year.

Those were among the findings in the CDC's first report that examined the number of U.S. children between the ages of 3 and 17 years old who have specific mental health disorders or indicators of mental health issues. The report—Mental Health Surveillance Among Children in the United States-2005-2011—appeared as a supplement in the Atlanta-based agency's weekly morbidity and mortality report. The study comes four months after President Barack Obama included expanding access to mental health services as one of the core elements of his gun-control initiative, “Now is the Time.”

According to the CDC's report, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, was the most prevalent diagnosis, which was found in 6.8% of children between 3 and 17. Following ADHD were behavioral or conduct problems (3.5%); anxiety (3%); depression (2.1%); and autism spectrum disorders (1.1%). About 4.7% of kids between the ages of 12 and 17 had an illicit drug-use disorder in the past year, and 4.2% had an illicit alcohol use disorder. Meanwhile, suicide—which the study said “can result from the interaction of mental disorders and other factors”—was the second leading cause of death among children between 12 and 17 in 2010.

The CDC worked with other federal agencies such as the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Health Resources and Services Administration on the report. Concluding that mental health is a part of public health, the study said the goal now should be for those partnering agencies to build on their strengths and create better ways to document how many children have mental health disorders and to inform needs for treatment and intervention. It also said that standard surveillance case definitions are required to categorize and count mental health disorders among surveillance systems in a way that's reliable.

“More comprehensive surveillance is needed to develop a public health approach that will both help prevent mental disorders and promote mental health among children,” the study said.

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