(Press-News.org) For mental health to gain significant attention, and funding from policymakers globally, it is not enough to convince people that it has a high disease burden but also that there are deliverable and cost-effective interventions – according to South African researchers writing in this week's PLoS Medicine.
Mark Tomlinson and Crick Lund from the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health based at the University of Cape Town, argue that global mental health must demonstrate its social and economic impact. The authors argue: "a coherent evidence base for scalable interventions that can be shown to have an impact at the structural level—on economic development and human well-being—is central. This is the language of most policy makers."
World-wide, the lifetime prevalence of mental disorders is between 12% and 49%, with over 70% of this burden in low- and middle-income countries. Despite this, mental illness has not received appropriate visibility, policy attention, or funding. Furthermore, 44% of African countries do not even have a mental health policy, and 33% do not have a mental health plan. Yet even in rich countries, when health budgets are cut, quite often the first area to be cut is mental health. In the United States, US$2,100,000,000 has been cut from mental health budgets over the last three years, and further cuts are expected for 2012.
Tomlinson and Lund discuss a framework to help understand why some global health initiatives are more successful in generating funding and political priority than others and argue that a health issue gains political priority when three conditions are met: country political leaders and international leaders publicly and privately express support for the issue, and do so in a sustained fashion; policies are enacted to address the problem; and resources appropriate to the disease burden are allocated to the issue.
However, the authors say: "in the case of mental health, none of these conditions is currently being met in a substantial way."
The authors conclude: "Greater community cohesion and international governance structures need to be developed to contribute to a more unified voice regarding global mental health. International organisations such as the World Health Organization, the World Federation for Mental Health, and the Movement for Global Mental Health, as well as national organisations, need to become a united force, for example, through a unified organisational network that delivers clear, consistent, and well-timed messages for policy and public consumption. "
INFORMATION:
Funding: Mark Tomlinson is supported by grants from the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (USA), National Institute on Drug Abuse (USA), and the National Research Foundation, South Africa. Crick Lund and Mark Tomlinson are funded by a grant from the Department for International Development (DFID), United Kingdom. Crick Lund is supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (USA). The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of NIAAA, NIDA, NIMH, NRF or DFID. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Tomlinson M, Lund C (2012) Why Does Mental Health Not Get the Attention It Deserves? An Application of the Shiffman and Smith Framework. PLoS Med 9(2): e1001178. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001178
END
In their February editorial, the PLoS Medicine Editors reflect on recent research by Olav Lindqvist and colleagues which describes nonpharmacological palliative care for cancer patients in the last days of life. The qualitative study found that the approaches used by palliative care staff were multifaceted, with physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and existential care interwoven in caregiving activities. The Editors comment: "[Lindqvist and colleagues' findings] reveal the complex and sometimes subtle caregiving approaches that palliative care staff take to improve ...
The ability to detect and respond to magnetic fields is not usually associated with living things. Yet some organisms, including some bacteria and various migratory animals, do respond to magnetic fields. In migratory animals like fish, birds, and turtles, this behavior involves small magnetic particles in the nervous system. However, how these particles form and what they are actually doing is not fully understood.
In a new study, published February 28 in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology, Keiji Nishida and Pamela Silver of Harvard Medical School take a major ...
Some disease-causing parasites are known to favor one sex over the other in their host species, and such differences between the sexes have generally been attributed to differences in immune responses or behavior. But in a new article, published February 28 in the magazine section of the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology, David Duneau from Cornell University and Dieter Ebert from the University of Basel now propose that all sorts of characteristics that differ between the sexes of the host species can influence a parasite's adaptation.
These characteristics, such ...
Reconstructing family trees dating back to 1811, Dutch researchers have estimated the death risk for people with inherited heart rhythm disorders, according to a study in Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics, a journal of the American Heart Association.
Heart rhythm disorders can result in sudden cardiac death in apparently healthy people because of severe disturbances in the rhythm of the heart. The risk is high for people who carry one of these rare genes and have symptoms such as fainting.
Before the study, the risk in people without symptoms was less certain. Thus, ...
U-Jam Fitness, a cardio dance fitness program that unites world beats with urban flavor and takes students around the world from Hip-Hop to Bollywood, announced a special 90 minute class and celebration in honor of its two year anniversary.
U-Jam Fitness founders Susy C. Marks and Matt Marks launched the athletic dance fitness program in January 2010 to give students of all levels an intense and sweat-induced workout set to exciting, high energy music--a unique combination of world beats with urban rhythm. In just two years, the fitness program has exploded and now ...
Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have discovered a new 'off switch' in our immune response which could be boosted in diseases caused by over-activation of our immune system, or blocked to improve vaccines. The findings are published this week in the journal Nature Communications. The research was funded by Health Research Board, Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland.
The research team, led by Dr Anne McGettrick and Professor Luke O'Neill, at the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, have discovered that a protein, called TMED7, can shut down part of our immune ...
MONTREAL, February 28, 2012 – Research results published in Brain Injury by Université de Montréal neuropsychologist Dave Ellemberg reveal that adolescents are more sensitive to the effects of a sport-related concussion than adults or children. These kinds of injuries mostly affect their working memory – the brain function that enables us to process and store short-term information and that is essential for activities such as reading and mental calculation. "The frontal regions of the brain are more vulnerable to concussions. These areas oversee executive functions responsible ...
BOSTON -- (Feb. 28, 2012) -- Using high-precision microscopy and X-ray scattering techniques, University of Oregon researchers have gained eye-opening insights into the process of applying green chemistry to nanotechnology that results in high yields, improves efficiency and dramatically reduces waste and potential negative exposure to human health or the environment.
University of Oregon chemist James E. Hutchison described his lab's recent efforts to monitor the dynamics of nanoparticles in an invited talk today at the American Physical Society's March Meeting (Feb. ...
New figures published today (Wednesday) estimate that there will be nearly 1.3 million deaths from cancer in 2012 in the European Union (EU) – 717,398 men and 565,703 women. Although the actual numbers have increased, the rate (age-standardised per 100,000 population) of people who die from the disease continues to decline.
Writing in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology [1], a group of researchers from Italy and Switzerland estimate that the overall cancer death rates will be 139 per 100,000 men and 85 per 100,000 women in 2012. Compared with confirmed deaths in 2007 ...
Individual atoms of a certain chemical element can be very stubborn when it comes to separation, mainly because techniques rely on a difference in chemical and physical properties — atoms are almost identical in both regards.
However, if you peer closely enough into the atoms, there are subtle differences that can have very big effects. These "different" atoms, called isotopes, are heavily relied on in areas of medicine and nuclear energy and now researchers have proposed a novel way of isolating them.
Reported today, Wednesday 29 February, in the Institute of Physics ...
