results also point to the fact that symptoms and work functioning are two different areas with betterment of work functioning lagging substantially behind symptoms improvement this is significantly less than the to fold risk for serious and severe mental disorders however due to the much higher prevalence of mild and moderate disorders in the general population their overall impact is likely to exceed the burden stemming from severe mental illness this was already found more than twenty years ago by broadhead et al again due to their high prevalence the milder forms of depression accounted for a much higher amount of total disability days