Mental Health & Illnesses Across the Lifespan and Populations

Anyone can be affected by mental illnesses, no matter your age, race or lifestyle. To learn more about how mental illnesses affect people during different stages of their life or how they affect different populations, use the menu on the left.

Most text in the following lifespan pages are paraphrases and direct quotes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General-Executive Summary. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, 1999.