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Someone once said that the statistics of depression are miserable, and in fact, the statistics showing how many American people are depressed are staggering. For example, the National Institute of Mental Health, called the NIMH, said that depression affects about 17 million adults every year in America.

Unfortunately that’s much more than coronary heart disease, AIDS and even more than cancer! Further they report that in their estimate, 15 percent of chronic depression cases will end in suicide. Women are said to be twice as likely as men to be chronically depressed. Also 90% of suicides had a diagnosable mental illness and it was usually a depressive disorder.

Other depression statistics point out that approximately 80-90% of all cases can be effectively and successfully treated. This information is borne by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

The National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association has stated that an estimated $43 billion a year is lost to depression. Mostly this is attributed to medical costs, lost productivity and of course absenteeism from the work force. Also, 80-90% of people who have a serious mental illness are unemployed.

You may want to know what is depression. There are three dissimilar kinds of depression, bipolar disorder or manic depression, major depression and dysthymia at last. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has indicated that major depression will affect up to 15% of American people sometime during their lifetime.

Major depression is said to come in episodes, whereas dysthymia does not come in episodes at all, but rather is persistent through many years. According to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Depression Statistics point to almost 10 million Americans that may have dysthymia each year.

Manic-depression or Bipolar is much less common, as it’s reported in the statistics of depression that only about 6 million or 3% of American people are affected by this type of depression in a given year.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has reported that having a serious medical disease may cause depression as well. For example, persons who have had a heart attack, they’ll have 40% chance of feeling depressed.

Really terrifying on the subject of depression statistics is the great depression facts that roughly 80% of people who are currently experiencing depression symptoms are not receiving treatment. Also 4% of adolescents will develop serious depression and truly unfortunate is the fact that suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for those aged 10 to 24 years old. It is also expected that depression will become the world’s 2nd most universal health problem by the year 2020.