Mental, neurological and substance use disorders rarely occur in isolation and can increase one’s risk of other diseases and injuries. This has significant consequences on life expectancy [30,31]. Previous studies have shown that up to 80% of deaths in those with mental, neurological and substance use disorders occur as a result of a comorbid physical illness such as cardiovascular disease or cancer [30,31]. For disorders like epilepsy, rates of excess-mortality also vary by world regions with higher rates reported in some developing countries [32]. In spite of this, YLDs explained a larger proportion of the burden due to mental, neurological and substance use disorders compared to YLLs in GBD 2010. To estimate YLLs, GBD 2010 followed the ICD-10 cause of death categories, whereby deaths can only be assigned to a given condition when the disorder is considered a direct cause of death. This approach can only account for some of the excess deaths attributable to mental, neurological, and substance use disorders, given that deaths will also be coded to the direct physical cause of death. For instance, ischemic heart disease
