According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2004, approximately 17 million people experienced depression. Comparatively in 2004, doctors diagnosed 1.37 million patients with cancer. Even with this being said, mental disorders rightfully take the back seat to medical disorders in research. Anyone who would disagree with this statement probably has had a direct experience with someone who suffered from a mental disorder. First-hand experience with any disorder can result in someone having a personal vendetta against that disorder. This results in people providing money for specific research, or even conducting research themselves. For those who have been personally affected, try to see an unbiased perception of the two types of disorders. When looking at these two areas of disorders and simultaneously leaving your emotions behind, medical research takes the lead.
Much to the dismay of an editorial in the journal Nature*, most medical disorders already receive more funding than mental disorders. Cancer and heart disease can receive approximately one hundred times more money than diseases such as Alzheimer’s in some fundraiser settings.
But this author still doesn't think that this is enough. The majority of any money raised does go to diseases like Alzheimer's which appear later on in life unlike depression or Schizophrenia which can occur throughout a person's entire life. Schizophrenia, however, only occurs in 1.1% of the United States population and is already treatable through medication.
Another thing to consider while dealing with these disorders is their fatality rates. The main cause of death from mental disorders is suicide, ranking up about 30,000 deaths a year. Meanwhile, heart disease kills about 630,000 and cancer kills about 560,000 annually. Heart disease alone kills about twenty-one times more people than suicide.
Medical disorders are also much easier to do research on since they are usually dealing with more quantitative details rather than qualitative. For example, if a patient has cancer, the doctors can directly, or indirectly through machines, examine the tumor. For a medical disorder, though, a patient would be asked a series of questions where they could answer whatever they decided was fitting. Mental research, in this regard, is less accurate since it is solely based on the thoughts and feelings of the individual. Results from medical disorder research is more clear since there is physical proof of the disorders and how they are being affected by attempted treatments.
This same issue with mental research occurs when dealing with the severity of a disorder. As for cancer, it is fairly common knowledge that the bigger a tumor, the worse you have cancer. This same principle cannot be applied to mental disorders. It is hard to classify one instance of the disorder as 'severe' while another as 'mild' since any symptoms can be exaggerated by the patient and therefore the results would be skewed. Even if a specific doctor discovered a way of qualifying the severity of a disorder, there would be no real way of transferring this exact system to other doctors since so much would be based on how affected the patient thought himself to be and how affected the doctor perceives the patient to be.
Yes, mental disorders can be very destructive and devestating, but when there is limited funding, more aspects must be considered. Money can be more effectively used when going towards medical research since medical disorders are easier to quantify and are much more prevelant. In any case, the point of trying to cure disorders is to try to maintain the human race and keep people alive, right? More people die from heart disease and cancer, so developing treatments for these instead of mental disorders could potentially save more lives. In the grand scheme of things, mental disorders really can take the back seat.
*A Decade for Psychiatric Disorders Nature 463, 9 (7 January 2010) | doi:10.1038/463009a; Published online 6 January 2010
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