Estimates of Mentally Ill Too High, Study Says: “A new study suggests that mental disorders may be less prevalent among adults in the United States than was thought.” The profession’s most reliable estimates of the prevalence of mental illnesses have been based on an extraordinary study, the Epidemiological Catchment Area Program of 1980-85, and another similar study five years later. Door-to-door interview surveys tallied how many people had taken medication, consulted professionals, or reported a degree of emotional distress sufficient to interfere with their functioning. But many mental health professionals, including myself, felt intuitively that the resulting finding that over 30% of the study sample qualified for a diagnosis of a mental disorder was implausible, calling into question the study methodology, the reliability of the surveyors’ conclusions and the prevalent definitions for various diagnoses. Readers have often heard me observe that the profession has a vested interest in maintaining “market niche” in an increasingly competitive field, and I wondered if the discipline’s unconscious biases were contributing to inflation of the estimates. The new study agrees.