Abstract

Which Disorders Rank Highest on the Misery Meter?Joan Arehart-Treichel Four affective disorders—dysthymic disorder, general anxiety disorder, social phobia, and agoraphobia—cause people even more misery than schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder. Of all the mental disorders that can afflict people, which inflict the greatest misery?Some of the affective disorders, data from two related studies show.The first study was published in the April 2007 British Journal of Psychiatry, the second in the November 2010 issue of that journal. The lead investigator was Samuli Saarni, M.D., Ph.D., a senior researcher at the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, Finland. In the 2007 study, the researchers screened a representative sample of about 8,000 Finns in medical settings using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) to determine whether, during the past year, they had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, dysthymia, panic disorder, social phobia, agoraphobia, general anxiety disorder, or alcohol dependence. The researchers then evaluated individuals who had such disorders with an instrument called the Health-Related Quality of Life 15D (HRQoL 15D), which was developed by Harri Sintonen, a professor of health economics at the University of Helsinki, in 1981. It rates 15 dimensions of an individual's quality of