Mental Illness Is A Much Bigger Problem For The Poor, New Study Shows [View all]

[KamaAina]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/28/mental-health-coverage_n_7456106.html

If you want to talk about inequality in America, you should be talking about mental illness -- and the ability of people to get treatment for it.

On Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new study that demonstrates, in vivid terms, something that public health experts have known for a while: Mental health problems are far more common among the poor than the rich....

According to the new CDC paper, 8.7 percent of people with incomes below the poverty line, or $20,090 for a family of three, reported serious psychological distress from 2009 to 2013. For people with annual incomes at or above four times the poverty line -- that’s $80,360 for a family of three -- the figure was just 1.2 percent.

Researchers also discovered that about 30.4 percent of working-age adults with serious distress had no health insurance, compared with just 20.5 percent of working-age adults without serious distress.

Surprise, surprise! </gomer-pyle>