What’s the economic cost of untreated mental illness? One state did the math.

Doctors diagnosed Willie Frazier with depression and borderline personality disorder when he was a teenager. 

“Depression is real,” Frazier said. “And it can hit you anywhere. You will be at the top of the world and then one little thing and you just completely at the bottom.”

When someone has a chronic mental illness, like major depressive disorder, finding the strength to seek help can feel unsurmountable.

“I even tried to rip my own teeth out,” Frazier said. “I just wanted to feel something besides the thoughts in my head telling me I’m not good enough.”

Twenty-eight million U.S. adults who have a mental illness go untreated. This is bad from a public health perspective, but it also hurts the economy. Take Indiana, where researchers put a price tag on untreated mental illness. The numbers are staggering.

Frazier is one of roughly 400,000 people in that state with untreated mental illness. Researchers found that untreated mental illness cost Indiana over $4 billion in 2019. For context, the state’s leading agricultural industry, corn, generates about $3.3 billion a year.

Heather Taylor, who led the study, said the workforce loss is huge.

“If you take those costs that we’re incurring, $4.2 billion a year, that equates to about 100,000 jobs,” Taylor said.

Some of the cost is the result of missed workdays.

“So we are taking money out of our economy because we’re not treating these conditions. Well, frankly, individuals don’t have appropriate access to the treatments that they need,” she said.

When people don’t have the treatment they need, it can lead to premature death. That’s where most of that $4 billion figure comes from — fewer people working, paying taxes and adding to the economy.

According to a 2008 study — the most recent — untreated mental illness costs the U.S. at least $193 billion every year.

Researcher Marion Greene at Indiana University said one barrier is the health care workforce shortage. It’s lengthened wait times to see mental health specialists. 

“People with serious mental illness, they generally have to have some type of medication and medication management,” Greene said. “So they need to see a psychiatrist before they can get the right prescriptions.”

And even if a provider is available, it’s still tough for people like Willie Frazier, who has a history of self-harm. He has a low income and doesn’t have insurance.

“Therapists costs so much, mental medicine costs so much,” Frazier said. “And I’m just like, I’m not going to pay for this when I can’t afford it.”

Frazier said he is working hard to get his own insurance so he’ll be closer to accessing the health care he needs.

If you or someone you know are in a mental health crisis, you can call the mental health crisis and suicide prevention line at 988.