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| WHO highlights global underinvestment in mental health care |
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Multithumb found errors on this page: There was a problem loading image C:\wamp\www\images/stories/08_mental.jpg There was a problem loading image C:\wamp\www\images/stories/08_mental.jpg  Geneva - One in four people will require mental health care at some point in their lives but in many countries only two per cent of all health sector resources are invested in mental health services. Average global spending on mental health is still less than 3 US$ per capita per year. In low income countries, expenditure can be as little as 0.25 US$ per person per year, according to the World Health Organization's Mental Health Atlas 2011 released on World Mental Health Day. The report also finds that the bulk of those resources are often spent on services that serve relatively few people. "Governments tend to spend most of their scarce mental health resources on long-term care at psychiatric hospitals," says Dr Ala Alwan, Assistant Director-General of Non-communicable Diseases and Mental Health at the World Health Organization (WHO). "Today, nearly 70 per cent of mental health spending goes to mental institutions. If countries spent more at the primary care level, they would be able to reach more people, and start to address problems early enough to reduce the need for expensive hospital care." Meanwhile, many people have no access to mental health services at all. Across the low-and middle-income group of countries, more than three quarters of people needing mental health care do not even receive the most basic mental health services. Since then, some countries have made significant progress in scaling up their services with assistance from WHO. For example: * Ethiopia and Nigeria have begun training their primary health care personnel to identify and treat priority mental disorders. The Ministries of Health of both countries have committed to sustain the program for lasting impact; * China has scaled up its program to provide care for epileptic patients to 19 provinces, building on successful experience in a small number of pilots in provinces. More than 40 million people are now covered by this program; * Jordan is making progress with a program for priority mental disorders. Panama has begun training its primary care providers on a systematic basis; * large, developing countries like Brazil, India and Thailand are also preparing to make rapid advancements in scaling up care through their national health programs. (Source: healthcanal)   Socialize this Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay in touch and receive all of TT updates right in your feed reader
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