One in five adults has a mental disorder: “Prevention must start in primary school”

healthcare

More than one in five adult Flemish people function less well due to depression, anxiety, addiction or another psychological disorder. In particular, psychological problems that arise in childhood have increased significantly. And many people still delay seeking help for a long time.

People with a mental disorder function less well in important areas of life, such as work, relationships, finances or physical health. Initial figures from the inter-university chair Public Mental Health Monitor now show that no fewer than 22 percent of adult Flemish people met the criteria for a mental disorder: 9 percent have a depression, 12 percent an anxiety disorder and 11 percent an addiction.

The remaining 12 percent have an ‘externalizing’ disorder. This includes problems that often start during childhood or teenage years: eating disorders, self-injury, impulsiveness, aggressiveness or attention and concentration disorders. A quarter of adults who suffer from this condition say that these problems started before the age of 13.

For comparison: addictions usually start around the age of 18, anxiety disorders around 24 and – yet also striking – the median age at which people first experience depression has dropped from 38 to 24 in twenty years. About one in three Flemish people will experience a psychological disorder in the course of his or her life.

Overall, this is a significant increase in twenty years. Addictions and fears are increasing, but the most striking increase occurs in externalizing disorders and that is disturbing. This is what Margot Cloet, managing director of Zorgnet-Icuro, who finances the chair for three years, says: “Efforts to prevent mental disorders should initially focus on children and young people and start from primary school age.”

Search for help

There is still a large gap in care: only three in ten people with a mental disorder received treatment within a year. That fact remains stable over time. The average delay in seeking help is still ten years. This recently changed for the milder problems: those who seek help from primary care psychologists do so on average within four to six years.

The researchers argue for further active efforts to detect ‘places’ for psychological help, because increasing one-on-one consultations will not be enough: “We must also focus on people with a lower socio-economic status. They are much more likely to have a disorder and need treatment. There is still a lot of mental health gain to be made here, and therefore also social and economic gain.”

The Public Mental Health Monitor collected data for the thirteen mental health networks in Flanders and Brussels. This was done via online surveys, in Dutch, which were carried out in December 2023.