Why Is This Important?

Adult mental health issues range in a spectrum from day-to-day challenges with stress, anxiety, and "the blues", to persistent mental health challenges arising from chronic physical conditions such as diabetes, asthma, and obesity. to chronic clinically-diagnosable psychiatric morbidities such as anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression, to serious life-threatening situations such as suicidal ideation and suicide attempt, which sometimes result from a combination of the mental and physical health challenges mentioned above. A host of measures exist for assessing the mental health status of individuals, but characterizing the mental health status of the population is a relatively new field. If such an assessment can be done using a simple and non-invasive approach with a reasonable level of sensitivity and specificity, the resulting characterization of the population's mental health can help public health and mental health professionals better understand the distribution of mental health issues in the population and design better systems to help identify, address and mitigate these issues before they become more serious. Among measures that have been suggested by the CDC as potential tools for assessing population well-being and mental health is the frequency with which people experience poor mental health. This measure is based on the single question, "How many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good?" Respondents who report that they experienced 14 or more days when their mental health was "not good" were classified as experiencing "Frequent Mental Distress" ("FMD"). Although FMD is not a clinical diagnosis, evidence suggests that it is associated with a person's mental health status. A 2011 study by Bossarte et al. concluded that 6 or more days of poor mental health ("Mental Distress") could be used as a valid and reliable indicator of generalized mental distress with strong associations to both diagnosable depressive symptomology and serious mental illness.

Definition

Percentage of New Jersey residents 18 years or older experiencing "Mental Distress", defined as answering 14 days or more to the question, "Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health NOT good?"

Data Source

How the Measure is Calculated

How Are We Doing?

In 2021, the estimated prevalence of mental distress in New Jersey was 13.9%.