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发帖数: 29846 | 1 (Reuters) - Europeans are plagued by mental and neurological illnesses, with
almost 165 million people or 38 percent of the population suffering each
year from a brain disorder such as depression, anxiety, insomnia or dementia
, according to a large new study.
With only about a third of cases receiving the therapy or medication needed,
mental illnesses cause a huge economic and social burden -- measured in the
hundreds of billions of euros -- as sufferers become too unwell to work and
personal relationships break down.
"Mental disorders have become Europe's largest health challenge of the 21st
century," the study's authors said.
At the same time, some big drug companies are backing away from investment
in research on how the brain works and affects behavior, putting the onus on
governments and health charities to stump up funding for neuroscience.
"The immense treatment gap ... for mental disorders has to be closed," said
Hans Ulrich Wittchen, director of the institute of clinical psychology and
psychotherapy at Germany's Dresden University and the lead investigator on
the European study.
"Those few receiving treatment do so with considerable delays of an average
of several years and rarely with the appropriate, state-of-the-art therapies
."
Wittchen led a three-year study covering 30 European countries -- the 27
European Union member states plus Switzerland, Iceland and Norway -- and a
population of 514 million people.
A direct comparison of the prevalence of mental illnesses in other parts of
the world was not available because different studies adopt varying
parameters.
Wittchen's team looked at about 100 illnesses covering all major brain
disorders from anxiety and depression to addiction to schizophrenia, as well
as major neurological disorders including epilepsy, Parkinson's and
multiple sclerosis.
The results, published by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (
ENCP) on Monday, show an "exceedingly high burden" of mental health
disorders and brain illnesses, he told reporters at a briefing in London.
Mental illnesses are a major cause of death, disability, and economic burden
worldwide and the World Health Organization predicts that by 2020,
depression will be the second leading contributor to the global burden of
disease across all ages.
Wittchen said that in Europe, that grim future had arrived early, with
diseases of the brain already the single largest contributor to the EU's
burden of ill health.
The four most disabling conditions -- measured in terms of disability-
adjusted life years or DALYs, a standard measure used to compare the impact
of various diseases -- are depression, dementias such as Alzheimer's disease
and vascular dementia, alcohol dependence and stroke.
The last major European study of brain disorders, which was published in
2005 and covered a smaller population of about 301 million people, found 27
percent of the EU adult population was suffering from mental illnesses.
Although the 2005 study cannot be compared directly with the latest finding
-- the scope and population was different -- it found the cost burden of
these and neurological disorders amounted to about 386 billion euros ($555
billion) a year at that time. Wittchen's team has yet to finalize the
economic impact data from this latest work, but he said the costs would be "
considerably more" than estimated in 2005.
The researchers said it was crucial for health policy makers to recognize
the enormous burden and devise ways to identify potential patients early --
possibly through screening -- and make treating them quickly a high priority.
"Because mental disorders frequently start early in life, they have a strong
malignant impact on later life," Wittchen said. "Only early targeted
treatment in the young will effectively prevent the risk of increasingly
largely proportions of severely ill...patients in the future."
David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacology expert at Imperial College London who
was not involved in this study, agreed.
"If you can get in early you may be able to change the trajectory of the
illness so that it isn't inevitable that people go into disability," he said
. "If we really want not to be left with this huge reservoir of mental and
brain illness for the next few centuries, then we ought to be investing more
now." |
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