Mental illness: is there a global epidemic?

There are dozens of different kinds of mental illness, from common disorders that affect tens of millions of people such as depression and anxiety, to rarer afflictions like paraphilia (sexual compulsion) and trichotillomania (a compulsion to remove hair). But insofar as data exists, the most reliable time series curated by the Institute for Health Metrics Evaluation (IHME) appears to show that in 2017, just under 300 million people worldwide suffered from anxiety, about 160 million from major depressive disorder, another 100 million from the milder form of depression known as dysthymia. Depressive disorders, which may affect as many as 300 million people worldwide, account for about one third of mental illness DALYs.

Source: www.theguardian.com