Worldwide Prevalence and Disability From Mental Disorders Across Childhood and Adolescence: Evidence From the Global Burden of Disease Study
Open accessAbstract
Importance: The period from childhood to early adulthood involves increased susceptibility to the onset of mental disorders, with implications for policy making that may be better appreciated by disaggregated analyses of narrow age groups. Objective: To estimate the global prevalence and years lived with disability (YLDs) associated with mental disorders and substance use disorders (SUDs) across 4 age groups using data from the 2019 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. Design, Setting, and Participants: Data from the 2019 GBD study were used for analysis of mental disorders and SUDs. Results were stratified by age group (age 5 to 9, 10 to 14, 15 to 19, and 20 to 24 years) and sex. Data for the 2019 GBD study were collected up to 2018, and data were analyzed for this article from April 2022 to September 2023. Exposure: Age 5 to 9 years, 10 to 14 years, 15 to 19 years, and 20 to 24 years. Main Outcomes and Measures: Prevalence rates with 95% uncertainty intervals (95% UIs) and number of YLDs. Results: Globally in 2019, 293 million of 2516 million individuals aged 5 to 24 years had at least 1 mental disorder, and 31 million had an SUD. The mean prevalence was 11.63% for mental disorders and 1.22% for SUDs. For the narrower age groups, the prevalence of mental disorders was 6.80% (95% UI, 5.58-8.03) for those aged 5 to 9 years, 12.40% (95% UI, 10.62-14.59) for those aged 10 to 14 years, 13.96% (95% UI, 12.36-15.78) for those aged 15 to 19 years, and 13.63% (95% UI, 11.90-15.53) for those aged 20 to 24 years. The prevalence of each individual disorder also varied by age groups; sex-specific patterns varied to some extent by age. Mental disorders accounted for 31.14 million of 153.59 million YLDs (20.27% of YLDs from all causes). SUDs accounted for 4.30 million YLDs (2.80% of YLDs from all causes). Over the entire life course, 24.85% of all YLDs attributable to mental disorders were recorded before age 25 years. Conclusions and Relevance: An analytical framework that relies on stratified age groups should be adopted for examination of mental disorders and SUDs from childhood to early adulthood. Given the implications of the early onset and lifetime burden of mental disorders and SUDs, age-disaggregated data are essential for the understanding of vulnerability and effective prevention and intervention initiatives.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Mental ill health is a major threat to the lives and futures of young people, and its prevalence and impact are steadily increasing in many high-resource settings where hard data are available.
“Mental ill health is a major threat to the lives and futures of young people, and alarming evidence suggests that its prevalence and impact are steadily increasing in many high-resource settings where hard data are available (panel 1).”
From The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on youth mental health (2024) · cites this paper as [3]
The figure text labeled Abstract (page unavailable) reports that mental disorders account for 20.27% of years lived with disability among 5- to 24-year-olds, supporting the claim of a major impact on young people. The retrieved passages do not show that prevalence or impact has been steadily increasing in high-resource settings; the tables count data sources, not changes in mental health outcomes. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe trend of deteriorating mental health is more striking than environmental, economic, and lifestyle threats to physical health and has continued and even accelerated over the past two decades.
“Although some environmental, economic, and lifestyle threats to physical health are growing, the trend of deteriorating mental health is more striking and has continued and even accelerated over the past two decades.”
From The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on youth mental health (2024) · cites this paper as [3]
The Abstract reports that mental disorders account for 20.27% of years lived with disability among people aged 5 to 24, but that is a comparison of burden, not of trends. Searches for acceleration, changes over the past two decades, and environmental, economic, or lifestyle threats found no passage in our copy addressing the claimed trend. (LLM, conf=0.72)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Kessler, R. C., Berglund, P., Demler, O., Jin, R., Merikangas, K. R., & Walters, E. E. (2005) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.62.6.593 · Cited by 20,391 · see citing works
Self-citationVos, T., Lim, S. S., Abbafati, C., Abbas, K. M., Abbasi, M., Abbasifard, M., Abbasi-Kangevari, M., Abbastabar, H., Abd-Allah, F., Abdelalim, A., et al. (2020) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30925-9 · Cited by 19,358 · see citing works
Self-citationOur future: a Lancet commission on adolescent health and wellbeing
Patton, G. C., Sawyer, S. M., Santelli, J. S., Ross, D. A., Afifi, R., Allen, N. B., Arora, M., Azzopardi, P., Baldwin, W., Bonell, C., et al. (2016) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(16)00579-1 · Cited by 3,785 · see citing works
Sawyer, S. M., Azzopardi, P. S., Wickremarathne, D., & Patton, G. C. (2018) · The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health · doi:10.1016/s2352-4642(18)30022-1 · Cited by 3,666 · see citing works
Guidelines for accurate and transparent health estimates reporting: the GATHER statement
Stevens, G. A., Alkema, L., Black, R. E., Boerma, J. T., Collins, G. S., Ezzati, M., Grove, J. T., Hogan, D. R., Hogan, M. C., Horton, R., et al. (2016) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(16)30388-9 · Cited by 1,798 · see citing works
Cortese, S., Song, M., Farhat, L. C., Yon, D. K., Lee, S. W., Kim, M. S., Park, S., Oh, J. W., Lee, S., Cheon, K.-A., et al. (2023) · Molecular Psychiatry · doi:10.1038/s41380-023-02228-3 · Cited by 211 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on youth mental health
McGorry, P. D., Mei, C., Dalal, N., Alvarez-Jimenez, M., Blakemore, S.-J., Browne, V., Dooley, B., Hickie, I. B., Jones, P. B., McDaid, D., et al. (2024) · The Lancet Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/s2215-0366(24)00163-9 · Cited by 663 · see citing works
Self-citationAdvances in the use of virtual reality to treat mental health conditions
Bell, I. H., Pot-Kolder, R., Rizzo, A., Rus-Calafell, M., Cardi, V., Cella, M., Ward, T., Riches, S., Reinoso, M., Thompson, A., et al. (2024) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-024-00334-9 · Cited by 140 · see citing works
Cabezas-Klinger, H., Fernandez-Daza, F. F., & Mina-Paz, Y. (2025) · Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.3390/bs15111450 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
“2025 , 15 , 1450 2 of 16 early maturation (Kieling et al., 2024).”
Child and adolescent psychiatry: challenges, solutions, opportunities, and future directions
Cortese, S., Arango, C., Aymerich, C., Catalan, A., Chetouani, M., Cohen, D., Coghill, D., Gabellone, A., Iniesta, R., Kadan, A., et al. (2026) · World Psychiatry · doi:10.1002/wps.70044 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Sarca, M., Cojocaru, A., Dumache, R., Bernad, B. C., Nussbaum, L. A., Costea, I., Anghel, T., & Hogea, L. (2026) · Healthcare · doi:10.3390/healthcare14050601
“Around the world, in 2019, mental health conditions were widespread and rising; an estimated 28% of the global population experienced depression and about 26.9% suffered anxiety, while stress affected roughly 36.5% [1,2].”
Influential
- Authors
- Kieling, C., Buchweitz, C., Caye, A., Silvani, J., Ameis, S. H., Brunoni, A. R., Cost, K. T., Courtney, D. B., Georgiades, K., Merikangas, K. R., Henderson, J. L., Polanczyk, G. V., Rohde, L. A., Salum, G. A., & Szatmari, P.
- Affiliations
- Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (BR)
- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CA)
- Universidade de São Paulo (BR)
- Hospital for Sick Children (CA)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- McMaster University (CA)
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Department of Psychiatry, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil
- Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression, Division of Child and Youth Mental Health, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health & University of Toronto, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Corresponding author
- Kieling, Christian
- ORCID
- Venue
- JAMA Psychiatry
- Publisher
- American Medical Association (AMA)
- Published
- 2024-04-01
- Volume
- 81
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 347
- ISSN
- 2168-622X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC10831630
- OpenAlex
- W4391385014
- Cited by
- 687
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 318 · 2025: 286 · 2024: 83
- FWCI
- 325.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- JAMA Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- MQ: Transforming Mental Health (MQBF1)
- Academy of Medical Sciences (NAF\R10\100044, GCRFNG\\100281)
- Medical Research Council (MC_PC_MR/R019460/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health and Medical Studies
- Keywords
- mental illness, substance use disorders, global prevalence, years lived with disability, child mental health, adolescent mental health, young adults, age-stratified analysis, sex differences, global burden of disease, disability
- MeSH terms
- Global Burden of Disease, Adolescent, Adult, Mental Disorders, Child, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Health, Global Health, Prevalence, Quality-Adjusted Life Years, Substance-Related Disorders
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
