In GBD 2010, the burden of mental and substance use disorders were estimated separately from that of neurological disorders, such as dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and epilepsy. This approach was done to better accommodate differences in the burden between these groups of disorders. Mental and substance disorders were one of the leading causes of disease burden in 2010. They were responsible for 7.4% of global DALYs and 22.9% of global YLDs, making them the fifth leading cause of DALYs and the leading cause of YLDs [15]. Neurological disorders explained 3% of global DALYs and 5.6% of global YLDs [1,11]. The overarching findings of the study for all 291 diseases and injuries have been presented [1,10–14], as have findings for mental and substance use disorders [15,16]. This paper presents GBD 2010 burden estimates of mental, neurological and substance use disorders as a group. Analysing burden estimates at this aggregated level is important from both the clinical and population-health perspectives, given that the organization of services in many LMICs does not separate neurological disorders from mental disorders, something seen as a progression of
