Mental Health Facts

• Taxpayers spend roughly $100,000 per day to house individuals living with mental illnesses or individuals with psychiatric disabilities in prisons.
• 24% percent of U.S. Presidents met the diagnostic criteria for depression, including James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, and Calvin Coolidge.
• Florida ranks 49^th out of all the states in terms of per capita spending on mental health.
• A study by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2006 showed that 64% of local jail inmates, 56% of state prisoners, and 45% of federal prisoners had symptoms of serious mental illnesses.
• One of the most widely reported reasons that individuals do not seek treatment is the stigma surrounding mental illnesses.
• Approximately 10.2 million adults have co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.
• One in four adults, approximately 61.5 million Americans experience mental illness in a given year.
• 1 in 17, about 13.6 million, live with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder.
• Approximately 26% of homeless individuals live with a serious mental illness.
• Mental illnesses cost America an estimated $193 billion in lost income per year.
• It is estimated that 60% of individuals with serious mental illnesses are willing to work but cannot because of barriers to employment.
• Individuals living with mental illnesses or individuals with psychiatric disabilities in the criminal justice system are usually arrested for nonviolent, petty crimes such as loitering or public disturbance, not violent crimes….AND…these individuals stay in jail eight times longer than other inmates, at seven times the cost.