Health Issues Global Mental Health

[SummerRain]

I had always thought of mental health problems as a western/developed country, middle-class kind of problem. I didn't really think that developing countries would have a prevalence of mental health problems. Maybe that was naive. I don't know where I got this idea from, but I think it's a pretty common one, and one that has never really been challenged to me.

Until I listened to a Podcast from The Life Scientific of Prof Vikram Patel: a psychiatrist who is interest in global mental health. He started off as a skeptic - subscribing to the idea that mental health was a cultural, western problem and couldn't be applied to the rest of the world. He did field studies in Zimbabwe and later India using western treatments, including medication, to tackle mental health. He found that mental health problems were just as prevalence and that western treatments worked just as well in these settings.

The Centre For Global Mental Health says:

The vast majority of the hundreds of millions of people with mental, neurological and substance use disorders (MNS) in the world do not have even their basic health care needs met. Most of these people live in low and middle income countries. Global mental health is the discipline concerned with addressing this public health crisis.

They also have a list of relevant publications: http://www.centreforglobalmentalhealth.org/publications

But I think the take home message is simple. Mental health problems are now known to span all countries and cultures, and aren't a rich/western phenomena.

I thought I would share, for people like me, who thought that mental health problems were a western/rich phenomena. Who maybe though as a result, that their problems were less "real" than physical problems.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I'm the opposite...I'm not sure it occurred to me that the third world wouldn't have mental health problems.

 

[Moll Flanders]

Until I listened to a Podcast from The Life Scientific of Prof Vikram Patel: a psychiatrist who is interest in global mental health. He started off as a skeptic - subscribing to the idea that mental health was a cultural, western problem and couldn't be applied to the rest of the world.

That seems like an absolutely bizarre point of view to me.

 

[thefadedone]

That seems like an absolutely bizarre point of view to me.

Me too.

 

[Second Summer]

I can see two reasons why someone might think mental problems are less prevalent or non-existing in developing countries. The first reason is that people in developing countries often have other, more immediate concerns, such as finding enough food, staying safe, harvesting their crops etc. So westerners might be led to believe they simply have no time for mental illness, as if mental illness is something that can just be ignored, or will sort itself out if it's ignored.

The other reason is that some westerners have a romantic view of the developing world, so might think that mental illness doesn't exist there very much because everything there is so much more "natural". Closer to nature, people living together in big families etc.

 

[mary1]

Hmm...interesting to know that some people do believe(d) that mental illness is(/was) a "western" thing.

 

[thefadedone]

I can see two reasons why someone might think mental problems are less prevalent or non-existing in developing countries. The first reason is that people in developing countries often have other, more immediate concerns, such as finding enough food, staying safe, harvesting their crops etc. So westerners might be led to believe they simply have no time for mental illness, as if mental illness is something that can just be ignored, or will sort itself out if it's ignored.

The other reason is that some westerners have a romantic view of the developing world, so might think that mental illness doesn't exist there very much because everything there is so much more "natural". Closer to nature, people living together in big families etc.

Both of those reasons make me sad and disgusted.

 

[MadamSarcastra]

If We Can Laugh at It, We Can Live With It - WhoWhatWhy

 

[shyvas]

Loneliness is deadlier than obesity, study suggests