The additional burden attributable to mental, neurological, and substance use disorders as a risk factor for other health outcomes can be investigated through comparative risk assessment analysis, which compares the current health status to a theoretical-minimum-risk exposure, in this case, the counterfactual status of the absence of mental, neurological, and substance use disorders in the population. The use of this method to estimate the additional burden due to mental and substance use disorders as risk factors for suicide showed that these disorders could account for over 50% of suicide YLLs in GBD 2010. These additional suicide YLLs would have increased the overall burden of mental and substance use disorders in 2010 from 7.4% to 8.3% of global DALYs [33].
