Editorial: Enduring Mental Health: The High Lifetime Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorder and Emerging Science of Persistent Mental Wellness

Just how common are "common" mental health problems? For much of the 20 th century, psychiatric research and the US health care system seemed to proceed under the assumption that the answer is "not very." It was not until the early 1990s that the United States conducted its first nation-wide survey of mental health problems, the National Comorbidity Survey, which revealed that about half of all adult participants had experienced at least one diagnosable psychiatric disorder in their lifetime, and close to 1 in 3 participants had met criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis in the past 12 months. 1 Subsequent longitudinal studies showed that these estimates-although initially surprising-were still too low, and that, with repeated assessments over long follow-up periods, the proportion of people who report at least 1 diagnosable brush with a psychiatric disorder can exceed 80%. 2.