Schizophrenia Facts:

The following information is taken from the book, Surviving Schizophrenia,

by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D

• Approximately 2.2 million Americans have schizophrenia in any given year. That is 8 persons out of every 1,000.
  

• At least 40 percent of them are not receiving treatment at any given time. Thus, there are approximately 900,000 individuals with schizophrenia who are not being treated.
  

• There are at least as many individuals with schizophrenia who are homeless, living on the streets, and in shelters, as there are in hospitals and related facilities.
  

• There are more individuals with schizophrenia in jails and state prisons than there are in all hospitals and related facilities.
  

• Individuals with schizophrenia are increasingly the victims of crimes, including robberies, assaults, rapes, and murders.
  

• Public psychiatric treatment services, housing , and rehabilitation services for individuals with schizophrenia are often grossly inadequate and, in many states, getting worse.
  

• The total direct and indirect costs of shizophrenia in the United States in 2000 were approximately $40 billion. That was more than the entire budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the VA combined.
  

• Approxmately $10 billion of that $40 billion was spent on federal disability payments (SSI and SSDI) for individuals with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia was the single largest diagnosis for individuals receiving both SSI and SSDI.