TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Layard, Richard
AU  - Chisholm, Dan
AU  - Patel, Vikram
AU  - Saxena, Shekhar
        TI  - Mental Illness and Unhappiness
        PY  - 2013/Sep/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 7620
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp7620
        AB  - This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points.
1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if mental health is included with a six-year lag. It explains more of the variance of life-satisfaction in the population of a country than physical health does, and much more than unemployment and income do. Income explains 1% of the variance of life-satisfaction or less.
2. Much the most common forms of mental illness are depression and anxiety disorders. Rigorously defined, these affect about 10% of all the world’s population – and prevalence is similar in rich and poor countries.
3. Depression and anxiety are more common during working age than in later life. They account for a high proportion of disability and impose major economic costs and financial losses to governments worldwide.
4. Yet even in rich countries, under a third of people with diagnosable mental illness are in treatment.
5. Cost-effective treatments exist, with recovery rates of 50% or more. In rich countries treatment is likely to have no net cost to the Exchequer due to savings on welfare benefits and lost taxes. But even in poor countries a reasonable level of coverage could be obtained at a cost of under $2 per head of population per year.

        KW  - mental illness
KW  - welfare benefits
KW  - healthcare costs
KW  - life-satisfaction
        ER  -