Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
By: Anshul Vipat
According to the National Mental Health Survey, more than 80% of mentally ill persons in the country don’t receive any treatment. Image Source: IANS
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives whilst around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions.
Three decades ago, 10 October was designated as World Mental Health Day. The aim was to spread awareness and increase sensitivity towards mental health issues. Although, the focus on mental health has expanded in many dimensions in this time, many people with mental illnesses lack access to treatment and continue to suffer in silence for fear of being typecast at home and in society.
Mental health is a global issue
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives whilst around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions. Globally, the total number of people suffering from depression was estimated to exceed 300 million in 2015, which is equivalent to 4.3% of the world’s population.
Neglect of mental health in India
In India, there has been little to no improvement in the mental health infrastructure despite numerous campaigns. According to the National Mental Health Survey (NMHS) 2016, which was conducted on a representative population from 12 states, 10.6% of the population had a mental disorder. Translated into real numbers, nearly 150 million Indians are in need of active interventions, the survey said. Yet for many, access to medical infrastructure is a dream.
The country first saw a nationwide National Mental Health Programme in 1982 and subsequently many new mental health initiatives – including the mental health policy in 2014 and the Mental Healthcare Act in 2017 have come up to strengthen mental health service-delivery at primary and secondary levels. However, most of these remain on paper.
According to the National Mental Health Survey, more than 80% of mentally ill persons in the country don’t receive any treatment. According to a study conducted by NCBI, since independence, the numbers of mental hospitals in India have increased from 31 to 45. There were about 10,000 beds in mental hospitals for a population of 400 millions at the time of India's independence. Over the last 50 years, the population has increased by nearly two and half times, while the number of beds had increased to only about 21,000. Thus, the psychiatric bed ratio has remained more or less constant at 1 bed for 5000 population. The prevalence of severe mental morbidity in India ranges from 3 to 10 per 1000, which is more than five times the bed strength available. There are only 0.3 psychiatrists and two mental health workers per one-lakh population in India, with most of them concentrated in urban areas.
India spends an abysmal fraction of its gross domestic product (GDP), estimated at under 2 percent on healthcare. Of these, very little goes to improving mental health infrastructure. On the other hand, countries like the UK spends 12 percent of its GDP on healthcare and the US spends 17.7 percent. The country has world-class talent in the form of its doctors, but inadequate infrastructure is gnawing at its healthcare sector from within. Ill-planned policies over the last 70 years have created an acute darth of health infrastructure.
The Union Budget 2021-22, proposed a corpus of Rs 71,269 crore for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which included a budget for mental healthcare – a total of Rs 597 crore. Shockingly, only 7 per cent of the entire budget went to the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP). In her Union budget speech in February 2022, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the launch of a ‘National Tele-Mental Health Programme. This programme will establish 23 tele-mental-health centres around the country to provide 24/7 mental health services for all. The progress of this is yet to be seen.
National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data states that a total of 1,39,123 suicides were reported in the country during 2019 showing an increase of 3.4 per cent in comparison to 2018 and the rate of suicides has increased by 0.2 per cent. One is seven Indians have reported mental health issues. This should open our eyes to the importance of integrating mental healthcare with the general healthcare system of the country.
