Mental disorders can happen to anyone, anywhere and at any time. In fact, one in four people experience a mental health disorder during their lifetime. Mental disorders affect the way people think, feel and behave and can bring about intense distress. They can impact employment, relationships and can even be life threatening.

A number of pharmacological and psychosocial interventions exist for the treatment of mental disorders, however many individuals are not able to access the care or services that they may require. Stigma and discrimination, lack of human and financial resources and poor mental health literacy are some of the reasons why people don’t get the help and support they need. It is imperative that we all work to enhance the availability of mental health services and improve the quality of life of people with mental disorders across the world .

This blog serves as a platform by which to share our thoughts on global mental health. Through this blog, we hope to communicate information pertinent to global mental health in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible. This blog is intended to form one small piece of a vast puzzle: the final picture of which is the promotion of mental health as a global agenda.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Mind the Gap

The World Health Organization state that treatment gaps for mental health may affect 75% of individuals suffering from mental health difficulties in low income countries: http://www.who.int/mental_health/mhgap/en/


However, treatment gaps are not exclusive to particular economic groups. 


The Mental Health Policy Group at the London School of Economics has today released a publication drawing attention to the fact that 75% of affected individuals are not receiving treatment for mental health in the United Kingdom: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/research/mentalhealth/default.asp


For a summary of this report, please see this article published in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/18/mental-illness-people-help


Whilst there is a focus on low and middle income countries in the movement for Global Mental Health (and quite rightly so), let us not forget that this is a Global movement. 


In 2006, the World Health Report advocated utilising 'task-shifting'- an effective strategy for tackling the lack of specialised human resources for healthcare by delegating specific tasks to health workers who were less specialised. In the first instance, this was appropriated for low/middle income regions where HIV/AIDS was particularly prevalent. 


The UK has adopted a model developed in low/middle income regions in order to address the shortage of human resources for mental health: Improving Access to Psychological Therapies. This programme has adopted a task-shifting approach. Non-specialised human resources are trained to deliver specific psychological therapies: http://www.iapt.nhs.uk/


The general assumption is that (countries like) the UK are the flagship for international development, research, health care and so on. 


Scaling up services for mental health may well involve a bi-directional sharing of knowledge between all countries. For Global Mental Health: each country should be its own flagship. 
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