Mental Health Day, Oct 10 has come and gone. With so much at stake, changes are essential to ensure that global mental health is truly prioritized.
1. When we say “mental health”, we need it to mean whole health.
We can’t keep acting as though mind and body are separate systems. Physical and mental health aren’t separate entities. Just ask anyone who suffers from IBS, chronic depression or social anxiety about the interplay between their physical and psychological suffering. Or ask someone with cancer how stress is affecting them.
Built up stress and trauma can wreak havoc on our bodies. Approaches to preventing, maintaining, and treating mental health must be grounded in proper psychoeducation, peer support, lifestyle, medicine, coaching and access to integrated health care, including the many groundbreaking, evidence-based forms of treatment that demonstrate promise in recovery and optimizing whole health and well-being.
2. When we say “all”, we need it to mean all.
The Anxiety and Depression Association of America reports “an overall lack of representation and diversity among mental health providers in the United States.”
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reports recent research that “members of the LGBTQ community are at a higher risk for experiencing mental health conditions — especially depression and anxiety disorders. Transgender individuals are nearly four times as likely as cisgender individuals (people whose gender identity corresponds with their birth sex) individuals to experience a mental health condition.”
3. When we say global “priority”, we need our systems to rise to the occasion.
The projected mental health crisis and subsequent critical shortage of mental health practitioners across the globe were well documented before the pandemic. Rural and remote areas have been hit particularly hard.
Priorities must be consistent, and not wax and wane according to the latest crisis, tragedy, or trend. Prioritizing global mental health means that allocations are made to ensure that education and health and human services systems are properly funded and supported. That access to care is relentlessly pursued by policymakers and leaders. Prioritization means that prevention isn’t just lip service. It must be brought to scale.
Awareness campaigns are important. Still, to move them from intention to action we need individual and collective will.
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