Americans spend more time on average living with diseases compared to people in other countries, according to a recent study from the American Medical Association. Published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the retrospective study found that Americans live with diseases on average for 12.4 years. The main diseases with which individuals live long-term in the United States are mental illness, substance use disorder and musculoskeletal conditions.
To determine this, the authors studied what’s known as the healthspan-lifespan gap, a ratio of the number of years lived with disease or disability, as opposed to simply one’s overall lifespan. It is considered an important metric for measuring the holistic health of individuals members in a society.
