The global community is overlooking a
growing crisis.
10/06/2017 16:26 EDT | Updated 10/06/2017 16:41 EDT
·
Craig KielburgerCo-Founder
of WE, social entrepreneur, author and speaker
Marc KielburgerCo-founder,
WE
BRUNO
BIERRENBACH FEDER/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
Two years after South Sudan gained
independence, Dr. Inka Weissbecker toured the young country's only mental
health facility.
The hospital looked more like a
prison ward. Patients were sedated, living in their own filth; a traumatized
young girl wandered the hallways unattended; people with schizophrenia had no
medication. Weissbecker, global mental health and psychosocial advisor for
the International Medical Corps, brought the tragedy to
potential donors, imploring them to fund better mental health services.
Her plea fell on deaf ears.
"They thought, 'South Sudan is
not ready for mental health. The country has bigger problems,'" she
recalls with frustration.
Mental health disorders affect one in four people around the world and even more
in low-and-middle- income countries riven by strife. Still, the problem is
often overlooked in light of other pressing development priorities.
It wasn't until civil war broke
out in South Sudan that mental health funding poured in, as the
world's attention turned to children with post-traumatic stress disorder and
traumatized civilians.
Money for mental health only follows
bombs, bullets and trauma, says Weissbecker, while a growing mental health crisis remains ignored.
For many, the logic is inescapable.
In the hierarchy of needs, lifting people out of poverty and ensuring they are
fed comes before mental health treatment.
But this thinking crumbles when you
look at the massive ripple effect of untreated mental health disorders.
Studies show a relationship between
mental health conditions and unhealthy lifestyles, leading to higher rates
of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, as well as drug and alcohol abuse. Health-care systems in
developing or crisis-plagued regions cannot handle the strain. Low-income
countries average one psychiatrist for every two million people and spend less than one per cent of their health budgets on
mental health.
Typically, when developing countries
do invest in mental health, the money doesn't go to outreach and prevention but
to mental hospitals. Institutions are much more disruptive to patient's lives,
and carry a greater stigma in areas where education and awareness are lacking.
Donors and international
organizations are often no better, explains Weissbecker. "When conflict
breaks out, that's when people start paying attention."
The international community has made
tremendous strides delivering medicines, containing outbreaks and fighting
disease around the world.
Now it must do the same for mental
health.
The United
Nations Sustainable Development Goals include mental health
alongside other focuses of development. This inclusion recognizes
mental health treatment as a human right, one that's key to empowering growth
and prosperity in all countries.
We need to do more. We need to fund
and train more psychiatrists and doctors, build community-based mental health
services, and help break the cultural stigma associated with treatment. These
are the types of solutions that should be talking points at the World Health
Organization annual meeting on mental health, in time for World
Mental Health Day on Oct. 10.
In Canada, we're a long way from
achieving our goals but we've started to recognize the social and economic benefits of investing in
mental health. It's time we applied the same standards around the world. And we
don't have to wait for the trauma of conflict.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are the co-founders of the WE
movement,which includes WE Charity, ME to WE Social
Enterprise and WE Day.
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