Key facts on how many people experience mental health problems, and stats on risk factors and availability of treatment.
This includes statistics about suicide and self-harm.
In any given week in England [2]:
A person's diagnosis may change several times during their life. Some complex conditions are measured by how many people will be given this diagnosis over the course of their lifetime, or in any given year:
But estimates for these diagnoses can vary quite a lot. Also, personality disorder and schizophrenia are controversial diagnoses. These labels can be stigmatising. And many people feel that they shouldn't be used at all.
Suicidal thoughts and self-harm aren’t mental health diagnoses. But they are related to mental health. Over the course of someone’s lifetime [2]:
Women are more likely to have suicidal thoughts and make suicide attempts than men [2]. But men are 3 times more likely to take their own life than women [4].
Reports from both England [2] and Wales [3] suggest that:
The overall number of people reporting mental health problems has been going up in recent years.
Overall reported suicide numbers have also gone up in England and Wales since 2018. They had been going down before that.
This is partly because in 2018 the rules changed around recording causes of death. So more deaths are now being recorded as suicide, whereas before they might have been recorded as something else.
But there has still been a clear increase in the number of men and the number of people under 25 taking their own life since 2018 [4].
We also know that:
This might mean that people are finding it harder to cope with mental health problems.
Anyone can get a mental health problem. But we know that some groups are more likely to get them than others.
These include:
It's important to know that your identity does not give you mental health problems. Causes of mental health problems can be very complicated. Higher risk for these groups is linked to several factors [7][8], including:
This information was published in June 2020. We will update it in 2023.
References and bibliography available on request.
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