What is the success rate for different illnesses?

Alchoholism, overall, in the States and internationally, between 4 and 5%. Same with other substance abuse.

Breast cancer is often curable these days if they catch it before it’s metastasized.

Recovery rates are very good for those with mental illness who seek out help and follow guidance.

In Great Britain, from National Health Service statistics:

The England mean average recovery rate was 44.8 per cent (189,152 of 421,744 referrals).

Patients suffering from a range of anxiety and stress-related disorders have a slightly higher recovery rate at 47.8 per cent (80,608 of 168,718 referrals) than for patients suffering from depression at 44.6 per cent (38,509 of 86,268 referrals).

In the United States:

According to the National Advisory Mental Health Council, the treatment success rate for bipolar disorder is a remarkable 80 percent.The recovery rates for other serious mental illnesses follow suit: major depression (65‐80 percent), schizophrenia (60 percent) and addiction (70 percent). Unfortunately, many individuals with mental illnesses will not even seek help — because of shame, misunderstanding or discrimination around treatment for these illnesses.

Tests of the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms on severely depressed cancer patients indicate an 80% success rate (don’t try this at home). The effects last for at least several months. Patients speak of a spiritual transformation. Is this the future of treatment for depression? Link

Success rate? From the answers thus far, I assume you are requesting that readers provide a disease, then statistics on successful treatments or cures? But I can’t steer past the novel idea of “successful illnesses”. How would you judge the “success” of an illness? Would it be by lethality, the numbers of those afflicted, the rapidity of its spread, resistance to treatment etc.? I mean which is the more successful illness, opioid addiction, the common cold or bubonic plague?

@zenvelo Here’s the problem with statistics concerning recovery from addiction: There is no standard metric. Therefore, depending on which agency one consults, the recovery statistics can be widely disparate, to say the least.

Studies suffer from differences in the definitions of important terms such as “addiction,” “treatment” and “recovery.” The use of reports of past behavior and relatively short follow-up periods are problematic as well.

Some even argue which class of disease substance abuse belongs. Should it be considered like we do cancer, where a relapse is failure of success, or like diabetes, where there may be intermittent crises, but continuous care and maintenance is observed in order for the patient to repeatedly recover and live out a reasonably productive life?

In addition to issues about the nature of recovery, the final statement zeroes in on one of the biggest challenges to definitions of “recovery” and “success”: duration. How long must “healthy” or “desired” behavior be maintained for recovery to be called successful – whether recovery is defined as “abstinence” or absence of certain problematic behaviors? This is difficult to answer because studies that look at 2–5 years out are rare relative to those that look within the first year of the designated conclusion of “treatment.”

I chose CDC those statistics that are based on no relapse after five years—temporary or permanent—which is 4 to 5% nationally and hasn’t changed since the 1930’s, athough the rehab industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar business since then to no noticeable effect.

Like all stats concerning the subject of addiction, they are probably faulty due to the lack of agreement on metric standards and classification of the disease. Let us hope so.

As a result, I find your stats way over optimistic and mine very depressing.

Hepatitis C has gone from being completely incurable at the turn of the century to successful treatment in over 90% of cases depending on the particular strain of the virus you have and your ability to pay for the treatment which can cost upto a $100k in the states (or 500 bucks in India).

@Espiritus_Corvus I don’t disagree with you.. I was just citing statistics from NAMH.