Background: One important aspect of the societal burden of mental disorders is the extent to which these problems cause disability.
Aims: To assess days out of role associated with commonly occurring mental disorders in comparison with physical disorders in Portugal.
Method: National cross-sectional survey, with home interviews carried out with 3849 adult (aged 18+) respondents (57.3% response rate).
Results: Twelve-month prevalence for any mental disorder was 21.8%, any physical disorder 55.1% and any disorder 63.1%, with an average of 2.3 disorders per respondent with a disorder. Close to one out of every 10 respondents (9.2%) reported at least one day totally out of role in the past month (median of 6.4 days/any). The 18 conditions accounted for 78.2% of all days out of role, with 20.2% because of mental disorders and 59.2% because of physical disorders.
Conclusions: Mental disorders account for a substantial proportion of all role disability in the Portuguese population. Early detection and intervention would have a positive societal effect. Owing to highly frequent comorbidity, simultaneous management of mental and physical disorder comorbidities is advised for greater effect.
Declaration of interest: R.C.K. in the past 3 years has been a consultant for Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., Johnson & Johnson's Wellness and Prevention, Inc. and Sanofi-Aventis Groupe. He has served on advisory boards for Mensante Corporation, Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc., Lake Nona Life Project and U.S. Preventive Medicine, Inc. He is a co-owner of DataStat, Inc.
Copyright and usage: © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2017. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license.