May 30, 2026
By Shola Ogundipe
With more than one in seven people globally living with a mental disorder, mental illness has officially become the world’s leading cause of disability, surpassing cardiovascular disease, cancer, and musculoskeletal conditions.
According to the Global Burden of Disease 2023 study, more than 1.17 billion people—roughly one in seven people on Earth—were living with a mental health condition in 2023. Since 1990, the global burden of these disorders has surged by a staggering 95.5 percent.
Even after adjusting for population growth and aging, the rise remains sharp across nearly every region of the globe. Anxiety and major depression are leading the quiet epidemic, which erodes quality of life over years and decades rather than claiming lives immediately.
