Posted on 12/02/2008 9:05:25 AM PST by BenLurkin
Almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and even more abuse alcohol or drugs, researchers reported Monday in the most extensive study of its kind.
The disorders include problems such as obsessive or compulsive tendencies and anti-social behavior that can sometimes lead to violence. The study also found that fewer than 25 percent of college-aged Americans with mental problems get treatment.
One expert said personality disorders may be overdiagnosed. But others said the results were not surprising since previous, less rigorous evidence has suggested mental problems are common on college campuses and elsewhere.
Experts praised the study's scope - face-to-face interviews about numerous disorders with more than 5,000 young people ages 19 to 25 - and said it spotlights a problem college administrators need to address.
Study co-author Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute called the widespread lack of treatment particularly worrisome. He said it should alert not only "students and parents, but also deans and people who run college mental health services about the need to extend access to treatment."
Counting substance abuse, the study found that nearly half of young people surveyed have some sort of psychiatric condition, including students and non-students.
Personality disorders were the second most common problem behind drug or alcohol abuse as a single category. The disorders include obsessive, anti-social and paranoid behaviors that are not mere quirks but actually interfere with ordinary functioning.
The study authors noted that recent tragedies such as fatal shootings at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech have raised awareness about the prevalence of mental illness on college campuses.
They also suggest that this age group might be particularly vulnerable.
"For many, young adulthood is characterized by the pursuit of greater educational opportunities and employment prospects, development of personal relationships, and for some, parenthood," the authors said. These circumstances, they said, can result in stress that triggers the start or recurrence of psychiatric problems.
The study was released Monday in Archives of General Psychiatry. It was based on interviews with 5,092 young adults in 2001 and 2002.
Olfson said it took time to analzye the data, including weighting the results to extrapolate national numbers. But the authors said the results would probably hold true today.
The study was funded with grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the New York Psychiatric Institute.
Dr. Sharon Hirsch, a University of Chicago psychiatrist not involved in the study, praised it for raising awareness about the problem and the high numbers of affected people who don't get help.
Imagine if more than 75 percent of diabetic college students didn't get treatment, Hirsch said. "Just think about what would be happening on our college campuses."
The results highlight the need for mental health services to be housed with other medical services on college campuses, to erase the stigma and make it more likely that people will seek help, she said.
In the study, trained interviewers, but not psychiatrists, questioned participants about symptoms. They used an assessment tool similar to criteria doctors use to diagnose mental illness.
Dr. Jerald Kay, a psychiatry professor at Wright State University and chairman of the American Psychiatric Association's college mental health committee, said the assessment tool is considered valid and more rigorous than self-reports of mental illness. He was not involved in the study.
Personality disorders showed up in similar numbers among both students and non-students, including the most common one, obsessive compulsive personality disorder. About 8 percent of young adults in both groups had this illness, which can include an extreme preoccupation with details, rules, orderliness and perfectionism.
Kay said the prevalence of personality disorders was higher than he would expect and questioned whether the condition might be overdiagnosed.
All good students have a touch of "obsessional" personality that helps them work hard to achieve. But that's different from an obsessional disorder that makes people inflexible and controlling and interferes with their lives, he explained.
Obsessive compulsive personality disorder differs from the better known OCD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, which features repetitive actions such as hand-washing to avoid germs.
OCD is thought to affect about 2 percent of the general population. The study didn't examine OCD separately but grouped it with all anxiety disorders, seen in about 12 percent of college-aged people in the survey.
The overall rate of other disorders was also pretty similar among college students and non-students.
Substance abuse, including drug addiction, alcoholism and other drinking that interferes with school or work, affected nearly one-third of those in both groups.
Slightly more college students than non-students were problem drinkers - 20 percent versus 17 percent. And slightly more non-students had drug problems - nearly 7 percent versus 5 percent.
In both groups, about 8 percent had phobias and 7 percent had depression.
Bipolar disorder was slightly more common in non-students, affecting almost 5 percent versus about 3 percent of students.
Hmmm...I’m afraid to fly, and sometimes it’s inconvenient. I guess I’d be considered disordered.
Well let’s by all means identify them. That’s 20% of the population the grabbers can prevent from buying guns, based mostly on over-diagnosis of minor “disorders.”
Yeah, right, considering they’ve decided being a socially awkward geek constitutes a disorder called “Asperger’s syndrome” I’m suprised this factoid has the incidence of disorders so low.
Somehow, the song “Officer Krupke” from West Side Story comes to mind..
Every time i see or hear obama i begin to get sick to my tummy
Its true a lot of people have certain issues, but lately disorders seem to be a prescription for dissatisfaction.
(I just hit the web thesaurus to check a synonyms for unhappiness and got at lest a half dozen advertisements for prescription antidepressants. What better proof is there?)
Aspergers is not just being a socially awkward geek. If you know someone who has it, it is tragic.
I think they like to call everything a disorder. That way they can treat it! ;)
You have Obama Aversion Syndrome.
personality disorder that interferes with everyday life,
shouldn’t the word ego be some place in the story.
Many young Americans only have one or two major disorders.
Mom and Dad.
I notice that the only recommendation is “treatment”. Addressing the underlying problem would be a better idea. We know that teenagers are under a lot of stress these days, with much less security and support from families and local communities than previous generations enjoyed. These issues are difficult to fix, but what would not be so difficult is to stop the national ritual of shipping teenagers off to college, hundreds or thousands of miles from home, and dumping them in a “diverse” dorm where everything and everyone is unfamiliar and structure is pretty much non-existent. For a small percentage of graduating high school seniors, who have well above average maturity and well above average academic ability and aspirations, this practice makes sense. But for the vast majority it doesn’t, and it just exacerbates psychological problems that in most cases would have remained minor, temporary, and insignificant, if the kids hadn’t been uprooted at such a vulnerable point in their development.
More than one in five young people are liberals!!!
I’d say nearly 5 of 5 or disordered.
My personality ‘disorder’ is low self-esteem resulting from a overly competative and reward based education system that I was abusively exposed to when I was a child.
Thankfully we’ve got that changed now and this ‘disorder’ will be a thing of the past since everyone is a winner now.
I keep saying this country has a profound mental health crisis on it’s hands, and this was before the election.
Now it seems the insane that are running the asylum are in the majority, like 52 million to 47 million?
Dr. Olson noted that the recent economic recession along with the discrediting of Freudian analysis has endangered the livelihoods and lifestyles of many psychiatrists and psychologists, and hoped that further research might reveal that as much as half of the American population is suffering from personality disorders.
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