NAMI Orange Co.

The mission of NAMI Orange County is to support persons with mental illness, their families and their friends, to improve education about severe brain disorders, to fight stigma, and to advocate for a continuum of high quality mental health care services. We support increased funding for research, adequate health care, housing, rehabilitation and jobs for people with serious psychiatric illnesses.

FACTS ABOUT SEVERE MENTAL ILLNESS

Severe mental illnesses are brain disorders, like epilepsy, Huntingtons disease, and Parkinsons disease. They include schizophrenia, manic depressive illness, severe depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and panic disorder.

Brain disorders are biologically based. They have no link to character, child-rearing, or other individual or familial behaviors.

Approximately 2.8 percent of the United States population, or 5 million Americans, will suffer from an acute episode of a severe mental illness in any given year. One out of every five families is or will be affected by a serious brain disorder.

For people with severe mental illnesses, the chances of obtaining significant benefit through treatment have never been better. The success rate for treating schizophrenia is 60 percent. The success rate for treatment of bipolar disorder is 65 percent, and for major depression, 80 percent. Panic disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive disorder have success rates of 80 percent and 75 percent, respectively. These success rates compare favorably to a 41 percent success rate for the Cardiovascular treatment, Angioplasty.

The costs of treating severe mental illnesses are comparable or less than costs to treat other serious illnesses. For example, the total direct cost in 1990 of treating a person with schizophrenia was $7158 compared with $7725 for treating a person with severe diabetes.