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According to the World Health Organization, countries spend around 2 percent of their health budget on mental health.¹ California is diverting its funding away from mental health services.² Wisconsin is on the verge of a cut in proposed mental health funding.³ There is constant debate about the relevance of mental health, yet the impact of mental health extends far beyond the brain to the rest of the body. While these associations are complicated, it is worth noting them.

Mental health problems are associated with the #1 killer: heart disease.

Cardiovascular diseases, principally ischemic heart disease and stroke, are the leading cause of global mortality and a major contributor to disability.⁴ Thirty prospective cohort studies with 40 independent reports that included 893,850 participants during a follow-up duration ranging from 2 to 37 years found that depression is independently associated with a significantly increased risk of coronary heart disease and heart attacks.⁵ In 46 cohort studies containing 2,017,276 participants and 222,253 subjects with anxiety, anxiety disorders were associated with an elevated risk of various cardiovascular events, including stroke, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and cardiovascular death.⁶ And another large-scale meta-analysis found that people with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease.⁷ Treating these psychiatric conditions reduces potentially fatal heart-related events.⁸

Mental health problems are associated with the #2 killer: cancer.

While cancer may lead to depression, depression may also predispose one to cancer.⁹ This connection is thought to occur through an abnormal immune system in depressed patients, leading to decreased protection from cancer.¹⁰ Also, when people with cancer have depression, it increases their chances of death.¹¹ Anxiety also has a similar role in cancer onset and prognosis.¹² Even mild anxiety and worry are associated with elevated cancer risk.¹³ Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder has been associated with an elevated risk of colorectal cancer.¹⁴ Also, people with autism spectrum disorders with intellectual disabilities or birth defects were found to have a higher rate of cancer.¹⁵

Mental health problems are associated with dementia.

Growing evidence indicates that depression is a risk factor for dementia. The elimination of depression is calculated to produce a 4 percent reduction in dementia incidence at the population level, exceeding the estimated effects of hypertension (2 percent), diabetes (1.2 percent), obesity (0.8 percent), and any physical inactivity (2.6 percent).¹⁶ Also, one meta-analysis that included nine prospective cohorts from eight studies, representing 29,608 participants, found that anxiety is significantly associated with an increased risk of all-cause dementia.¹⁷ A history of bipolar disorder also was found to increase the chances of dementia.¹⁸ Also, treating anxiety may lower the chances of dementia,¹⁹ and leaving depression untreated may increase the chances of dementia by 51 percent.

A negative impact on genes can explain the early impact of poor mental health on physical disease.

Central to many mental illnesses is stress. And stress²⁰ is associated with the insertion of extraneous chemical groups into genes such that they disrupt how the gene is signaling. This, eventually, can lead to chronic diseases. In fact, posttraumatic stress disorder can accelerate aging through this kind of impact on genes.²¹

The mental health budget is absurd.

The United States spent $4.1 trillion on health care in 2021. Alzheimer’s disease costs $321 billion. Heart disease costs $216 billion. And cancer care costs $200 billion. These are among the top-five most expensive illnesses.²² If we have strong evidence that poor mental health predisposes individuals to these illnesses and know that treating them decreases the chances of getting them, why are we not spending more money on mental health?

This simply does not add up. It’s as if government policies have not caught up with medical research. We are stuck in this old treatment paradigm and somehow leery about prevention when that is clearly an important priority financially and in terms of quality of life.

Conclusion

Since this is Mental Health Awareness Month, perhaps we can spread the word about this. It’s quite simple. The brain does not stop functioning below the neck. And when the challenges of mental illnesses plague it, it may distort cellular signaling, impacting cell division (leading to cancer), your heart (leading to coronary heart disease), and itself (leading to dementia). That’s why the funding should be significantly increased. And it’s why prevention and self-care matter while the world catches up to this. There are not enough qualified people to address this issue, either. Technology is likely the only way to scale this impact if done with care.