Tag Archive for: Mental Health

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Poverty and Mental Health

mental health
The connection between poverty and mental health is not surprising. The severe emotional strain and stresses associated with making ends meet, poor nutrition and unfavorable living conditions can be extremely high. Depression can be up to two times more prevalent among low-income groups and people with the lowest socioeconomic status are eight times more at risk for schizophrenia.

Yet this problem does not receive adequate attention in many places, partly due to the societal stigmas sometimes associated with mental health issues. Only two percent of national health budgets is dedicated to mental health and up to 31 percent of countries do not have a mental health budget at all.

In India, a string of farmer suicides have been making headlines. Driven to depression by rising debt, small farmers who are unable to make a profit with the scarcity of rainfall and falling prices of crops commit suicide. According to a CNN report, in 2013, 11,722 farmers killed themselves across India. The suicides plunge families further into financial insecurity and hopelessness. Government interventions are crucial to curb these disturbing losses of life. Policies pertaining to land reform, industrialization, agriculture, poverty alleviation, availability of financing and compensation to farmers are all going to be needed to alleviate the burdens on small farmers.

Stigma and isolation complicate matters in treating mental health issues. People who suffer from mental health issues are often discriminated against or are discouraged from seeking treatment.

In some parts of the world, mental problems can be regarded as a sign of an evil spirit. Sufferers are seen by traditional or spiritual healers and are not treated by counselors or psychiatrists. Decades of superstitions and beliefs are hard to overcome, particularly when dealing with a delicate problem.

Many organizations and projects are trying out methods to provide mental healthcare to affected populations, including projects like the Zimbabwe based Friendship Bench Project, which provides counseling sessions, the international Programme for Improving Mental Health Care, which researches on methods to scale up delivery of mental healthcare and India based Sangath, which trains lay people in counseling and works with other nongovernmental and governmental organizations to evaluate and launch models for mental healthcare. Dr. Vikram Patel, co-founder of Sangath, was recently named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people. This might aid in bringing more attention to this urgent issue.

While the Millennium Development Goals can go a long way towards alleviating poverty, which will reduce many of the stressors, mental health issues need to be given importance as a public health issue and duly addressed.

– Mithila Rajagopal

Sources: CNN, Prime, Sangath, SciDev, Times of India, World Health Organization
Photo: Flickr

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International Youth Day 2014

On Aug. 12,  the U.N. hosted an International Youth Day event at its headquarters in New York City. The event focused on the importance of addressing the mental health concerns of youth around the world, thus making them less susceptible to homelessness, crime and conflict situations.

The theme of this year’s International Youth Day was “Mental Health Matters.” The half-day event in New York City brought together young people, youth organizations, U.N. Member State representatives, civil society and U.N. entities for a series of presentations including panelists and young artist performances.

This event marked the official launch of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs publication, Social Inclusion of Youth with Mental Health Conditions.

The report reveals “one-fifth of the young people around the world experience a mental health condition, with risks especially great during the transition from childhood to adulthood.”

The U.N. seeks to banish the stigma that plagues those suffering from mental illness. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned in his opening remarks that failing to address access to mental health services makes affected youth “more vulnerable to poverty, violence, and social exclusion, and negatively impacting society as a whole.”

International Youth Day was marked overseas at a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia, where the mental health of the young is of particular concern. Somali youth face violence and crime on a daily basis, and many are forced to join military groups or survive on the streets.

A traumatic childhood, like that experienced by youth in Somalia, breeds mental illness. According to Philippe Lazzarini, the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Somalia, “We must be clear that what we need is nothing less than a paradigm shift in policies and attitudes towards the role of youth in order to empower and place them at the core of the development agenda.”

The population of those 25 years of age or younger is growing in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where young people are 70 percent of the civilian body. It is especially important for countries like the DRC to focus on mental health because the youth “are not only the Congo of tomorrow, but also the Congo of today,” said a U.N. representative from the country.

The World Health Organization recommends a range of specific actions that should be integrated into national development plans in order to break the cycle of debilitating mental illness. These strategies include supporting access to school for children with mental disabilities, integrating mental health issues into broader health policies and creating employment for those suffering from mental illness.

Assembly President John Ashe summed up the objective of this year’s International Youth Day, urging, “We should be especially focused on addressing the needs of youth with mental health conditions, many of whom experience discrimination on a daily basis. We must work together to ensure that young people with mental health conditions can lead full and healthy lives.”

– Grace Flaherty

Sources: World Health Organization, United Nations, UN DESA
Photo: Idealist Careers

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Revolutionize Healthcare, Revolutionize the World

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In order to improve and manage community health, health advocates help organize a plethora of services ranging from health events to educational experiences. Advocates come in many different forms and settings. For instance, health advocates are generally doctors and nurses though other health advocates may come from a different professional background, such as social work. However, health advocates can also come from a background unrelated to medicine, so long as the individual is burgeoning with a passion that centers on raising awareness of health-related issues.

Individuals who work as health advocates will typically aid clients in improving their health care experience by ensuring that clients not only learn about but also have an opportunity to access available programs and resources. According to SoCal Health Advocates, individuals in this field often endeavor to improve the lives of clients by breaking down barriers that prevent people from access to quality healthcare in order to prevent serious illness or prevent relapses.

However, health advocacy is not limited to only physical health. Due to its nature of stigmatization, great effort has been expended into improving mental health advocacy as well. According to the World Health Organization, it is crucial for advocacy efforts to continue educating the public about mental illness in order to truly revolutionize not only the manner in which mental health is perceived but also improve access to mental health treatments.

As part of its mental health advocacy efforts, the WHO has created MiNDbank, an online resource that has pooled together information regarding global policies and services regarding mental health. One of the goals of MiNDbank is to facilitate open debate and discussion about mental health topics in order to promote human rights for mental health patients as well as improving the mental healthcare system as a whole.

It is imperative for advocates to work towards eliminating the stigma and ignorance regarding mental illness, particularly since individuals with mental disabilities are subject to maltreatment and discrimination on a daily basis. Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, legal institutions have been unable to protect the basic human rights of these individuals.

Although the United States struggles with the burden of a stigmatized and under-funded mental healthcare system, many countries, lack adequate mental health facilities due to even greater stigma and a general lack of awareness. Therefore, mental health advocates strive to inform society about mental illness in order to reverse the disagreeable image of mental health patients, and ultimately, construct a more efficient, more understanding and more accessible global mental healthcare system.

– Phoebe Pradhan

Sources: SoCal Health Advocates, World Health Organization
Photo: IIR Healthcare

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Drones Impact on Mental Health in Pakistan

The United States has waged a drone campaign in Pakistan since the early 2000’s. The Waziristan region in northern Pakistan has been a specific target due to the major presence of the Taliban in the area. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London released a report indicating that drone strikes carried out by the U.S. have killed 3,581 people since 2004. That number includes 884 civilians and 197 children. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a rise in mental health issues.

The Huffington Post reported a story of a man who lost nine friends and relatives in one attack in 2009. While Mohammed Fahim was in another room, a drone hit his house, killing everyone else instantly. Fahim insists that his family had no ties to Islamist militancy, but instead that this was an attack that went astray.

Residents in Waziristan complain of living in a constant fear of drones, specifically citing the buzzing sound they emit when they fly overhead. This fear is leading to a rise in depression, anxiety, and in some cases psychotic episodes. Doctor Muktar ul-Haq is the head of psychiatry at a government hospital in the city of Peshawar. He told a story of a man who had a full blown psychotic episode after he found a SIM card outside of his house. A common rumor in Pakistan is that SIM cards emit signals to drones, guiding their attack. Haq said when the man was admitted he was “aggressive and paranoid.”

The social problems that plague Pakistan, such as poverty, Taliban violence, and unemployment, contribute to the rise in depression and anxiety. With all of these other problems, mental health falls to the bottom of the list. There are no official statistics about the rise in mental health issues, but some psychiatrists treating people in the region estimate that rates psychological illnesses have risen three fold.

– Colleen Eckvahl

Sources: Huffington Post, The Atlantic
Photo: CS Monitor

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15 Memorable TED Quotes

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TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is a global set of conferences owned by the private nonprofit organization Sapling Foundation. Under the slogan “ideas worth spreading,” TED events are held throughout the world, addressing a variety of topics, from science and culture to health, medicine, and global development. Here are some of the most memorable quotes made by TED speakers on the topic of poverty and development.

1.       “You don’t wake up one day no longer a racist. It takes generations to tear that intuition, that DNA, out of a soul of a people.”

–Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim

2.       “I’d grown up thinking that a [sanitary toilet] was my right, when in fact it’s a privilege — 2.5 billion people worldwide have no adequate toilet.”

–Rose George: Let’s talk crap. Seriously.

3.       “Child mortality [since 2000 is] down by 2.65 million a year. That’s a rate of 7,256 children’s lives saved each day. … It drives me nuts that most people don’t seem to know this news.”

–Bono: The good news on poverty (Yes, there’s good news)

4.       “What you do [to provide better aid is] you shut up. You never arrive in a community with any ideas.”

–Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!

5.       “The challenge of development: abject poverty surrounded by corruption.”

–Sanjay Pradhan: How open data is changing international aid

6.       “I have never met a villager who does not want a vote.”

–Rory Stewart: Why democracy matters

7.       “You don’t have to get rich to have [fewer] children. It has happened across the world.”

–Hans Rosling: Religions and babies

8.       “We get so little news about the developing world that we often forget that there are literally millions of people out there struggling to change things to be fairer, freer, more democratic, less corrupt.”

–Alex Steffen: The route to a sustainable future

9. “Connectivity is productivity — whether it’s in a modern office or an underdeveloped village.”

–Iqbal Quadir: How mobile phones can fight poverty

10. “We’ve seen how distributed networks, big data and information can transform society. I think it’s time for us to apply them to water.”

–Sonaar Luthra: Meet the Water Canary

11. “Birth control has almost completely and totally disappeared from the global health agenda, and the victims of this paralysis are the people of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.”

–Melinda Gates: Let’s put birth control back on the agenda

12. “Human development, not secularization, is what’s key to women’s empowerment in the transforming Middle East.”

–Dalia Mogahed: The attitudes that sparked Arab Spring

13. “The United Street Sellers Republic — the USSR — [would be] the second-largest economy in the world after the United States.”

–Robert Neuwirth: The power of the informal economy

14. “We need to deliver [mental] health care using whoever is available and affordable in our local communities.”

–Vikram Patel: Mental health for all by involving all

15. “It was the buildings [in Haiti], not the earthquake, that killed 220,000 people, that injured 330,000, that displaced 1.3 million people, that cut off food and water and supplies for an entire nation.”

–Peter Haas: Haiti’s disaster of engineering

– Nayomi Chibana
Feature Writer 

 

Read global poverty quotes.

Sources: TED, Reddit
Photo: Lingholic

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Why Mental Healthcare Is Important to Development

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Mental healthcare is important to development. Last month, the World Health Organization adopted the Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan of 2013-2020 to emphasize the importance of global mental health and to establish goals pertaining to mental healthcare.  The Action Plan is the first ever to make mental health its primary concern.

The main objectives of the Action Plan are to “implement strategies for promotion and prevention in mental health”, provide necessary mental health care when needed, and to strengthen research for mental health.

The Action Plan was created due to the fact that much of global health care overlooks mental health problems as a serious concern. The World Health Organization states that “people with mental and psychological disabilities are a vulnerable group as a result of the way they are treated by society”.

Those with mental disabilities are more likely to face physical and sexual victimization, and often times have trouble with school performance and finding employment, leading to a higher risk of living in poverty. On a larger scale, a lack of adequate mental health care for those in need can lead to “reduced social capital” and “hindered economic development”.

In order to reduce the risk of those with mental disabilities living in poverty, the World Health Organization seeks to incorporate adequate mental health support into schools in addition to making opportunities for employment available to those with mental disabilities. While many development efforts focus on ensuring that physical needs are met, the importance of mental health must not be overlooked.  When adequate mental health care is available to those in need, the individuals affected, their families, and their communities experience improved development outcomes.

– Jordan Kline

Sources: WHO, Forbes

Mental Illness Affected More By Poverty Than War

Mental Illness Affected More By Poverty Than War
The citizens of Afghanistan have now weathered a 12-year war in the country and, as U.S. and as NATO forces prepare to pull out by the end of 2014, a new study confirms that poverty and vulnerability are more significant to the development of mental illness and anxiety than exposure to war.

The study, focusing on war and mental health in Afghanistan, says that war is undoubtedly an identifiable precursor to mental illness, but that poverty and vulnerability are actually “stronger and probably more persistent risk factors that have not received deserved attention in policy decisions,” said Dr. Jean-Francois Trani.

The study elaborates on the origins of mental illness and political violence, saying that unemployment and lack of access to resources contribute to the absence of one’s place in a social hierarchy, which leads to mental anguish that, in turn, can cause young people to act violently towards any government or institutions of authority.

The study calls these social and cultural predetermined factors “social exclusion mechanisms,” and maintains that these factors were in place before war began, but are exacerbated by military conflict. The researchers recommend that policymakers take into account all factors of these at-risk groups to create a more stable and self-sufficient Afghanistan.

– Christina Kindlon

Source: Washington University in Saint Louis
Photo: Trends Updates