Just the Facts

1. It is estimated that some 58 million Americans, about one quarter of all adults in the US, experience the disabling symptoms of mental disorders each year. From people ages 15 to 44, mental disorders are the leading cause of disability.

2. Success rates for treatment has increased in recent years: 70-80% for depression, 70-90% for panic disorders,  60% for schizophrenia, and over 80% for clinical depression.

3. Extensive limits on mental health benefits can create major financial burdens for patients and their families; for a family with mental health treatment expenses for $35,000 annually, the average out-of-pocket burden is $12,000. For a $60,000 annual expense, the burden averages at $27,000.

4. In 1998, SAMHSA reported that adding children would result in a cost increase of 0.8%, and that creating substance abuse parity would increase costs by as little as 0.7%.

5. Expenditures from failure to treat addiction cost $300 billion. Untreated addiction costs six times more than heart disease, six times more than diabetes, and four times more than cancer. 

6. CALDATA found in 1999 that every $1 spent on treatment of mental health and substance abuse disorders saved state taxpayers $7 in future costs (emergency health care, imprisonment, court cases, etc. )

7. Lost productivity and earnings due to illness and social costs are estimated to total at least $113 billion annually. Clinical depression alone costs the US $43.7 billion annually, lost earnings due to depression-induced suicides totaling $7.5 billion.

8. Parity would extend insurance coverage to additional disorders which were formerly deemed not "severe enough": post traumatic stress syndrome, anorexia and bulimia, multiple personality disorders, and serious juvenile mental and emotional disturbances. 

9. Only one third of individuals struggling with addiction receive treatment. Insurance companies have cut benefits for addiction treatment for less than a quarter compared to in the early nineties. 

10. When mental health insurance parity was introduced in Vermont in the late nineties, Vermont residents with sever mental illness reported real benefits and savings because of the smaller co-pays and increased access resulting from the enactment of the legislation.