Frequent Mental Distress

Adults with lower incomes and LGBT individuals disproportionately experience more mental distress.  

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Frequent mental distress is defined as experiencing stress, depression, or problems with emotions for at least 14 out of the past 30 days. Experiencing this level of distress can indicate clinical depression and anxiety disorders, serious health conditions that have a negative impact on quality of life. In King County from 2020-2024, 14.0% of adults experienced this degree of distress.   

  • Income: The proportion of people with frequent mental distress decreased as income increased. People in households making less than $20,000 per year were nearly 3 times more likely to experience frequent mental distress than those in households making $100,000 per year or more (28.7% and 9.9%, respectively).  

  • Sexual orientation: At 29.7%, lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) residents were over twice as likely as heterosexual adults (11.5%) to experience frequent mental distress.  

  • Age: Rates of distress went down as age increased, being the highest for young adults ages 18-24 (26.3%) and the lowest for those over age 75 (6.3%).   

  • Gender: Women were more likely than men to experience frequent mental distress (16.5% and 11.5%, respectively). Transgender people (49.1%) were more than 3 times as likely as cisgender people (13.3%) to experience frequent mental distress.  

  • Race and ethnicity: Asians (9.1%) were less likely than Multiple Race (24.2%), American Indian/Alaska Native (20.0%), Black (17.3%), Hispanic (16.3%), White (14.4%), and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (13.9%) King County residents to experience frequent mental distress. 

  • Trends: The percentage of people who have frequent mental distress increased from 10.1% in 2015-2017 to 14.4% in 2022-2024.    

Measuring mental health:   

Because measuring mental health in the population in all its dimensions is challenging, researchers have developed different measures that use answers to questions on anonymous population surveys. Information on a related measure is given below:

Poor mental health days: According to the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, analogous measure to poor mental health days. It provides a slightly different picture which emphasizes those who are experiencing more chronic and likely severe mental health issues.” Information on poor mental health days in King County can be found here. 

 

Notes and Sources

Source: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) (2015-2024) 

Numerator: People who responded 14 or more days to the question: “Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good?”

Denominator: All respondents who answered the question. 

To learn more about the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and view the data biography, click here.

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