The World Health Organization (WHO) appealed on Tuesday (4/9/2007 to countries to increase their support for mental health services WHO said the appeal was part of a series of six reviews on global mental health which are being published today (4/9/2007) in the journal The Lancet with which the UN agency said was working closely to generate the evidence and formulate the call for action.
"WHO is supporting a call for action to increase the coverage of mental health services for mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries," WHO said in a media statement Tuesday (4/9/2007}
It said the call was targeted at public health planners and urged them to assign a higher priority to mental health.
Even when treatment is available, it is often delivered in institutional settings which in many countries are associated with stigma and human rights violations." According to WHO, the reasons for this bleak situation are clear: mental health services are being starved of both human and financial resources.
WHO’s Mental Health Atlas database shows that a majority of countries in Africa and South-East Asia spend less than 1% of their health budget on mental health.
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