United Nations Radio

mental health sufferer

Millions of people around the world suffer from depression, just one of the many types of mental illness. But the stigma still attached to people suffering mental health conditions often prevents them from being treated. On World Mental Health Day the UN called for mental health to be a global priority. UN Radio's Alicia Wood reports.

Mental health conditions can afflict people of any age, race, or socio-economic background. In the developing world, treating mental illness is made more difficult by conflict, poverty and displacement and a scarcity of resources,.

Dr Richard Dougherty, the president of Basic Needs, an organization that assists with the social and economic concerns of the mentally ill in developing countries, says there are many things that exacerbate mental illness in these countries.

DOUGHERTY: Two and a half times the rate of depression seen in the general population was seen by people living in poverty...Poverty has a huge impact on people's ability to cope, and it makes it much more difficult for them to find the resilience...Poverty creates a dynamic within families and within communities that exacerbates traumatic events too whether that be violence, abuse, because it creates a tension and a stress.

Dr Andrew Rasmussen, an Assistant Professor at New York University Department of Medicine, has researched the psychological effects of torture and conflict on people living in the developing world.

RASMUSSEN: If you do surveys in post-conflict environments you find upwards of a half screening positive, that is getting to the level of severe enough symptoms to screen positive for categories of post-traumatic stress and depression.

Dr Rasmussen recognized the work being done by different organizations to implement mental health services and increase awareness in developing countries, yet acknowledge the dangers present in bringing an outsider's method to a country.

RASMUSSEN: The problem with a lot of mental health counseling services is that very often there is not the infrastructure there to keep them going and sometimes you just don't have the level of expertise to maintain really good counseling programs. So NGOs go in, they train a group of para-professional counselors and they provide supervision to them for a period of time and then they move on out. And this group of counselors is left without supervision.

While acknowledging these problems, Dr Rasmussen and Dr Dougherty said the best way to support the mentally ill in developing countries was with community-based programs that aren't wholly dependent on outsiders, and that empower members of the community.

Alicia Wood for United Nations Radio.
Duration: 2'13"