Mental health is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community. However in the current times, there is a huge surge in mental health problems across the globe among people and is becoming an issue of concern. Therefore, it becomes necessary to raise awareness of mental health illnesses while educating the population and mobilizing efforts to support mental health.
WHO estimated that globally over 450 million people suffer from mental disorders. Currently mental and behavioural disorders account for about 15 percent of the global burden of diseases. Major proportions of mental disorders come from low and middle income countries. In India, the burden of mental and behavioural disorders ranged from 9.5 to 102 per 1000 population.
Burden of mental disorders seen by the world is only a tip of iceberg. Firstly, to promote mental health, there is a need to create such living conditions and environment that support mental health and allow people to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyle. A society that respects and protects basic, civil, political, and cultural rights is needed to be built to promote mental health.
Mental health policies should not be solely concerned with mental disorders, but should also recognize and address the broader issues which promote mental health. This includes education, labour, justice, transport, environment, housing, and health sector. For attaining this, inter-sectoral coordination is a mainstream.
There is a need to aim at improving child development by early childhood interventions like preschool psychosocial activities, nutritional and psycho-social help to give roots for a healthy community. Presently, the community is also demanding the skills building programme and child and youth development programmes.
Moreover, there is a need to do socioeconomic empowerment by improving access to education and employment opportunities. Social initiatives should be taken to bring people together for social, health and educational reasons as well as income generation activities. Society needs to be free of discrimination and violence. Reducing discrimination against sex, caste, disability and socioeconomic status is an important aspect to reduce mental disorders. Social support for elderly people needs to be strengthened. Programmes targeting towards indigenous people, migrants and people affected by disasters need to be established.
Another key to reduce mental morbidity is to strengthen the treatment of mental disorders at the level of primary health care. There are multiple interventions needed to prevent the progression of mental disorders from early manifestations to more serious and chronic cases. There is a need of simple, easily available diagnostic test and low cost treatment to provide better primary health care.
Moreover, social stigma associated with mental health issues is unfortunately a big challenge and we need to put our efforts best in breaking this stigma so that people who suffer — shall reveal their illnesses and ensure help.
More to say, psychiatric specialists, clinical psychologists and epidemiologists need to reorient their research in such a way that true burden of mental disorders are estimated at community level. This would provide true situation of the mental health problem. Secondary prevention must focus on strengthening the ability of primary care services to provide effective treatment.
(Author is a registered medical practitioner, health columnist and public speaker. Feedback: [email protected])
