DALY
Also written as: DALY — disability-adjusted life year
Disability-adjusted life year; a metric combining years lost to premature death and years lived with psychiatric disability.
Full Definition
Disability-adjusted life years represent a standardized metric used in psychiatric epidemiology to quantify disease burden by combining mortality and morbidity into a single measure. One DALY equals one lost year of healthy life. The measure adds years of life lost (YLL) due to premature mortality to years lived with disability (YLD), with disability weights applied based on severity. In psychiatric epidemiology, DALYs enable comparison of mental health disorder impact across different conditions and populations, facilitating evidence-based health policy decisions.
Usage
Usage note: Pluralize as DALYs, not DALY's; always spell out on first use in a document.
In Context
- "Major depressive disorder contributed 43.7 million DALYs to the global burden of disease in 2019." — WHO burden of disease report
- "The cost-effectiveness analysis expressed outcomes in terms of DALYs averted by the intervention." — health economic evaluation