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Lecture Notes

In addition to the health burdens that mental illnesses place on the individual who has them, and their families, we also spend a great deal of money on treating mental illnesses in the United States. So you can see on the left that in 2006, $57.5 billion were spent on treating mental illnesses, and this amount has increased since 1996 and is comparable to the amount that we spend on cancer and asthma, and just slightly less—as you can see in the figure on the right—than the $78 billion that we spent on heart conditions in 2006. So the take-home point here is not just that it costs us a lot of money, but that prevention and treatment of mental illnesses, in particular with behavioral changes such as being more physically active, is important not only for the health and wellbeing of our population, but also to reduce the economic burden of these diseases.