Mental health disorders research in Europe, 2001–2018

Abstract

BackgroundThe burden of mental health disorders in Europe is well above the world average and has increased from 11.5% to 13.9% of the total disease burden in 2000 and 2015. That from dementia has increased rapidly, and overtaken that from depression as the leading component. There have been no analyses of the research activity in Europe to combat this burden.MethodologyWe identified research papers in the Web of Science (WoS) with a complex mental health disorders filter based on title words and journal names in the years 2001-18, and downloaded their details for analysis.ResultsEuropean mental health disorders research represented less than 6% of the total biomedical research. We estimate that research expenditure in Europe on mental health disorders amounted to about €5.4 billion in 2018. The Scandinavian countries, with Croatia and Estonia, published the most relative to their wealth, but the outputs of France and Romania were less than half the amounts expected.Discussion and conclusionsThe burden from mental health disorders is increasing rapidly in Europe, but research was only half what would have been proportional. Suicide & self-harm, and alcohol misuse, were also neglected by researchers, particularly since the latter also causes many physical burdens, such as foetal alcohol syndrome, interpersonal violence, and road traffic accidents. Other relatively neglected subjects are sexual disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity and sleep disorders. There is an increasing volume of research on alternative (non-drug) therapies, particularly for post-traumatic stress and eating disorders, notably in Germany.

Mental health disorders research in the countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), 2008–17, and the disease burden: Bibliometric study

“…However, we excluded those whose cause is primarily genetic ("Autism and Asperger syndrome", "Childhood behavioural disorders", and "Idiopathic intellectual disability"). [This was the definition adopted for a recent project to map five European non-communicable disease research outputs in 2002-13 for the European Union [15,16]. It was intended to exclude those mental health disorders that are not readily treatable as a result of research.]…”

“…Drug treatment (DRUG) is by far the most popular type of research and is actively supported in Egypt (EG) and Iran (IR). The latter, and Turkey (TR), are also active in non-pharmaceutical treatments (TREA), whereas research on these is almost ignored in most of the other OIC countries, and the combined OIC output is only 3.7% of the total compared with 5.8% in Europe [16]. Epidemiology (EPID) is researched fairly equally in all the countries listed here, but five of them do noticeably more than expected (Indonesia, ID; Lebanon, LB; Uganda, UG; Tunisia, TN and Malaysia, MY).…”

“…Epidemiology (EPID) is researched fairly equally in all the countries listed here, but five of them do noticeably more than expected (Indonesia, ID; Lebanon, LB; Uganda, UG; Tunisia, TN and Malaysia, MY). Genetics only represents 6.3% of the total, much lower than in Europe (16%) [16]. Papers on health services research (n = 526) PLOS ONE represented 2.8% of the total.…”

Effectiveness of a web-based decision aid for patients with generalised anxiety disorder: a protocol for a randomised controlled trial

“…Anxiety disorders (ADs) are some of the most prevalent mental health disorders, twice as common in women than men. 1 2 They affect 61.5 million people in Europe, 3 and findings from a recent prevalence study in Spain indicated that about 11% of adults are affected by an AD. 4 ADs have an important negative impact on the health-related quality of life of patients as well as in their economies, due mostly to indirect costs.…”

Experiencias, Valores Y Preferencias De Las Personas Con Trastorno De Ansiedad Generalizada Sobre El Cuidado De Su Salud: Investigación Cualitativa

“…Stein et al 2017). Afectan a más de 260 millones de personas (Organización Mundial de la Salud, 2017) y aproximadamente a 61.5 millones de adultos en Europa (Begum et al 2020), mientras que en España, un estudio reciente indica que afectan al 11% de personas (Villagrasa et al 2019). Los TA son los más frecuentes dentro del ámbito de Atención Primaria (AP) y concretamente, el trastorno de ansiedad generalizada (TAG) tiene una alta prevalencia (Alonso and Lépine 2007;Bados 2017).…”