Law campaign
Need for more attention to mental health services in primary healthcare
The 2009 World Mental Health Day global awareness campaign focuses on “Mental Health in Primary Care: Enhancing Treatment and Promoting Mental Health.” This year's theme addresed the continuing need to “make mental health issues a global priority”, and stressed the all too-often neglected fact that mental health is an integral element of every individual's overall health and well-being. Mental illnesses do not choose their victims; they occur in all cultures and at all stages of the life span. Mental illnesses have a major impact on the physical health of people living with them. The campaign theme is intended to draw worldwide attention to the growing body of information and knowledge focusing on the integration of mental health in primary healthcare, and to provide this information to grassroots patient/consumer, family member/caregiver, and advocacy and educational mental health associations around the world. This is a significant trend in shifting mental health diagnosis, treatment and care from the traditional separate but unequal mental health services delivery system into mainstream healthcare.
The engagement of the “end users” of mental health services, their families who often carry much of the responsibility for helping people living with mental illnesses to manage in the community, and the advocates who attempt to influence mental health policies, is critical during this time of change, reform, and limited resources. One of the primary advocacy concerns that must be addressed is the danger that adequate and effective diagnosis, treatment and recovery of people living with mental illnesses will not receive a parity level priority within the general and primary healthcare system. It is the job of the global mental health advocacy movement to assure that this is not an unintended result of healthcare reform.
Advocates, families, professionals and policymakers across the global mental health sector must remember that this current movement to improve the way in which mental health services are delivered is not the first such reform effort. Lessons learned from the past tell us that achieving parity in how mental health services are addressed in countries around the world is not an easy struggle. The effective integration of mental health into primary care at a level of priority appropriate to the documented burden of care of mental illnesses will be a major undertaking in a time of global economic and social difficulty. Certainly, it is well past time for the world to listen and to act to improve mental health services and ready access to services by those experiencing serious mental health problems and disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, and depression! That is the central message of World Mental Health Day 2009!
Source: World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH).
