The Global Situation
Mental illness poses a massive problem. Globally, one in four people will develop a mental illness in their lifetime. Depression alone is the biggest cause of disability in the world. Mental illnesses know no social, ethnic or national boundaries and are a serious and real problem everywhere.
Mental ill health has an enormous impact on the lives of the individuals with the disease and on their families and communities, yet the global response is totally inadequate. Most countries simply do not take mental illness seriously.
Forty per cent of countries have no mental health policies and 25% have no mental health legislation. One-third of the world's people live in nations that invest less than 1% of their total health budget in mental health and this is especially the case in low-income countries where there is a tremendous lack of trained personnel and facilities.
More than 680 million people have access to less than one psychiatrist per million people. In Tanzania, there are six public sector psychiatrists for the whole country. In Ghana there are four. In Laos PDR, there are only two psychiatrists for the whole country and they are both based in the country’s only psychiatric hospital. In the UK there is one psychiatrist to 10,000 people.
There is a massive lack of infrastructure. Community care facilities have yet to be developed in about half of the countries. Even where there are community care facilities, they often aren’t available everywhere. Mental health care is simply not available through local health services. Currently, mental health care relies on placing individuals in institutions, where they can be sometimes physically chained and abused.
Mental illness weighs down heavily on the poor. Poverty impedes recovery - it distances people from access to help and support. The illness forces many out of work, often including the person caring for them as well, sending families further into poverty and pushing them further and further away from treatment.
Mentally ill people are not given a chance to lift themselves out of poverty because they are not included in other development projects. People think, because of their illness, that they are not capable of earning a living or being a part of other community development projects.
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