Mental illnesses became not only a national problem, but they also cost Americans at least $193 billion yearly in lost earnings alone, according to a recent study by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Mental illnesses are medical conditions that disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others, and daily functioning. Serious mental illnesses include major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and borderline personality disorder. The good news about mental illness is that recovery is possible.

Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people.

In addition, mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada for ages 15-44. Many people suffer from more than one mental disorder at a given time. Nearly half (45 percent) of those with any mental disorder meet criteria for 2 or more disorders, with severity strongly related to comorbidity.

The bad news is that suffering from a serious mental problem also affects a person’s ability to work, thus leading to earnings lost for those involved and for the U.S. That was exactly what researchers at the NIMH wanted to underline in their study.

They followed 2002 data collected from a nationally representative study of almost 5,000 Americans, aged 18 to 64, to calculate lost earnings among sufferers of serious mental illness.

The study found that, of the 86 percent of survey respondents who reported earning income, those with serious mental illness averaged $22,545 in yearly wages, compared with healthy workers’ average income of $38,852. Men with serious mental illnesses took a more significant financial hit than women.

Extrapolating the survey results to the general population, researchers estimated that mental illnesses cost Americans at least $193 billion annually in lost earnings alone.

However, the costs could be much higher than the estimate, as the survey did not evaluate people who were hospitalized, incarcerated or suffering from autism, schizophrenia or other chronic illnesses “known to greatly affect a person’s ability to work,” lead researcher Ronald C. Kessler, of Harvard University said in a prepared Statement, according to the Time.