Posttraumatic stress disorder costs the country hundreds of billions of dollars each year, with civilians contributing the lion’s share of the financial burden
By Tori DeAngelis Date created: January 1, 2023 1 min read
Vol. 54 No. 1
Print version: page 104
Cite This Article
DeAngelis, T. (2023, January 1). By the numbers: Examining the staggering cost of PTSD. Monitor on Psychology, 54(1). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/01/staggering-ptsd-costs
$232.2 billion
Estimated annual cost of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the United States among all U.S. civilians, active-duty military personnel, and veterans. The data were collected in 2018, the most recent year the data were available at the time of the study, and were gleaned from insurance claims data, academic literature, and government publications.
82%
Share of the nation’s PTSD costs that civilians are responsible for, compared with 18% of costs from military personnel and veterans, who collectively make up about 8% of the U.S. population. (PTSD occurs more frequently among active-duty military than among civilians, but less frequently among veterans than among civilians.)
$25,684
Annual cost of PTSD per person for military personnel and veterans, versus $18,640 per person for civilians. For military personnel and veterans, most of these costs are related to direct health care and disability payments, while for civilians, most costs are related to direct health care and unemployment.
66.4%
Share of women, compared with 33.6% of men, who make up the entire population with PTSD. According to research, potentially related factors include that women exposed to trauma have higher levels of PTSD symptoms than men exposed to trauma, and that women experience the traumas of sexual assault and domestic violence more often than men.
Source: Davis, L. L., et al. (2022). The economic burden of posttraumatic stress disorder in the United States from a societal perspective. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 83(3).
DeAngelis, T. (2023, January 1). By the numbers: Examining the staggering cost of PTSD. Monitor on Psychology, 54(1). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/01/staggering-ptsd-costs
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