The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the number of people currently suffering from various forms of mental disorder is now 10% of the world’s population.
This is contained in WHO’s Mental Health Atlas 2014 report made available on Tuesday in Geneva, Switzerland.
The report also indicates that one in four people is affected by mental health disorder at some point in their lives.
The report also predicted that depression would be the leading cause of global disease burden by the year 2030.
The organisation added that suicide was the second most common cause of death among young people and yearly affects some 900,000 people globally.
The report further indicated that 75% of people suffering from severe mental disorder received no treatment at all.
It says there is insufficient mental health workforce as there is less than one mental health worker per 10,000 people worldwide.
The WHO report also indicated that global spending on mental health remained insufficient and lower-middle income countries spend less than two dollars per capita per year on this sector.
This, it said, was in comparison to over 50 dollars spent per person annually in high-income countries, thereby, underlining the prevailing inequalities in access to mental health services globally.
WHO noted in the report that not one low-income country reported having a national suicide prevention strategy, compared to one third of high-income countries.
The report revealed that WHO had developed a mental health action plan with 2020 as its target, which aims at reducing suicide rates by 10 per cent.
WHO also said the action plan would ensure that 80% of countries of the world routinely collect and report mental health indicators every two years, and would also guarantee mental health legislation by 50% of countries.
No comments:
Post a Comment