The Future of Mental Health Awareness: A Global Perspective

A Global Perspective

Mental illness is an issue in need of critical and immediate attention on the global health front. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 400 million people worldwide suffer from some form of mental disorder or psychosocial infirmity, while only one in four sufferers are adequately diagnosed and treated. Mental illness accounts for approximately 12 percent of all disease worldwide and half of all measurable disabilities.

High-risk populations include the massive numbers of abused youths, refugees, and those traumatized by civil or external strife in their native lands. According to studies conducted by the Mental Health Institute (MHI) from 1995 to 2000, in the United States alone mental illness accounts for 21 percent of all hospital admissions, surpassing all other justifications for admission, and 16 percent of the general population is mentally ill. A global surge in mental health awareness is currently in progress, but current treatment and identification are certainly substandard, as is evident from the aforementioned statistics.

Mental ailments don't discriminate by creed, race, or gender; however, societies tend to wrongfully discriminate against those suffering from such disorders. A global stigma against those with mental illness prevents the afflicted from receiving proper care and unnecessarily instills fear in both sufferers and society as a whole. This customary disrespect creates barriers that drive potential patients away from health care facilities. The Center for Mental Health Serices (CMHS) reports that only one in four people in the United States seeks assistance--this small percentage due mostly to fear of being discriminated against.

Global health care organizations must not be restricted to treating only physical infirmities. The massive populations of undiagnosed, untreated sufferers from mental illness are often ignored because their ailment might not be manifested physically or pose an immediate threat to personal and societal safety. However, mental disorders are valid infirmities; medical experts repeat the apothegm, "Whatever is psychological is simultaneously biological." Thus, those receiving mental care are physically ill. Mental clinics and help organizations provide absolutely essential services; their efforts aren't frivolous but directed toward a generally stigmatized population and are thus widely undervalued. Nations receiving assistance in improving direct physical health should also feel obligated to provide for their significant population of psychologically afflicted citizens. Developing nations and developed societies alike need to become conscious of all manifestations of illness in order to competently care for their people.

In light of the aforementioned information, the need for a solution to the widespread bias concerning mental illness is imperative. As a global community, we need to arm ourselves with information concerning mental illness in order to assist the massive ailing population in all corners of the world. Societies ought to remove the taboo status from mental infirmity and learn acceptance and tolerance. By biasing ourselves against those with obvious maladies, we demonstrate flagrant cruelty and ignorance. Over time, all cultures must come to realize the validity of mental illness diagnoses and unify, rallying with full support and kindness behind those afflicted.

Nations receiving medical assistance should simultaneously be equipped with facilities catering to the mentally ill. Developed nations have to improve their current care standards, both fine-tuning diagnostic capabilities and increasing facility quality in order to effectively assist this population. Psychologists and psychiatrists need to create and strengthen a high-powered global medical community and health organization in order to improve awareness and treatment standards. Such an organization of professionals would train health care workers, providing culture-specific education in order to promote understanding of specific societal difficulties by region. These infirmities would be characterized, defined, and carefully catalogued by universally accepted protocol in order to provide treatment and therapy awareness among the psychological community. In addition, a unified mental health awareness campaign should be instituted; this campaign would encourage the afflicted to seek treatment while minimizing the stigma associated with psychological disorders. Mental health professionals would then simultaneously target the general populace, encouraging acceptance and general mindfulness of mental health while urging those with mental infirmities to seek help. With an informed population of citizens, more individuals would be effectively identified as needing treatment.

Specific treatment required for sufferers includes the provision of housing, medicine, education, and employment. Consumers, researchers, providers, employers, advocacy groups, and psychological professionals must unite in coalitions to ensure the well-being and proper treatment of the severely disturbed. And mental illness needs to be more effectively insured so as to encourage the treatment of specific populations. Individuals and organizations should rally behind provisions for these afflicted populations by instituting protective medical and anti-discriminatory legislation, as well as disseminating persuasive information to insurance companies. Mental illnesses, being valid afflictions, necessarily should be treated with the same respect and compensation as are direct physiological disorders.

Benefits of instituting a worldwide awareness effort are manifold. For individual nations, death rates would drop, as nearly all suicides involve mental maladies. For example, according to the 1997 National Institute of Mental Health report Suicide Facts, in the United States suicide is the eighth leading cause of death and is most often prompted by depression and substance abuse, both mental afflictions. Increasing cognizance concerning mental health could save millions of lives. Work forces would increase as rehabilitated patients become capable of functioning in society. National morale would increase due to the increase in healthy, productive citizens. In addition, a mental health awareness campaign would unite a society against cultural misunderstandings, helping to develop a more cohesive nation.

Thus, the key to improving global acceptance of mental health treatment and the improvement of holistic well-being within individual nations lies in information dispersal.

Kathryn S. Bennett is a sixteen-year-old student from Terre Haute, Indiana. This essay earned an honorable mention in the 2000 Humanist Essay Contest.

COPYRIGHT 2001 American Humanist Association
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group