Mental health is generally excluded from the social context in developing countries. The absence of mental health policy and programmes, negligible budgets for mental health care, and routine human rights violations of mentally ill people are evidence of the need for action.

Available mental health services tend to be urban-centred and hospital-based, with the result that 80%-90% of populations have no access to treatment. People labelled as mentally ill are the worst victims of social violence; mainstream society still fails to acknowledge their suffering as a valid human experience that requires attention and support. Once people are labelled as mentally ill, as far as society is concerned, their civil and human rights are suspended for ever. They are exposed to discrimination that results in a non-human identity and damaged personality.

When, I publicly shared my experience of struggling with mental disorder since my early childhood, I had never thought that the majority of my friends would turn their backs on me instead of being supportive. These were the same people who treated me as a lifelong friend before they knew I had some mental problems.

It is sad for me, and hard to accept that my public identity of a person facing mental disorder ruined my social contacts and a sense of belonging to my society as an equal human. I don't feel responsible for such artificial social behaviour; however, I am suffering because of that. But this experience gave me a new mission in life: to fight to ensure justice and human dignity for the mentally afflicted community across the world.

Recalling my own experience, social ostricisation is worse than the real illness. Further, I noticed that the stigma surrounding mental illness adversely affects mental health professionals as well. It creates enormous psychological burden for them while working in a socially stigmatised environment. There is more glamour working as an animal rights activist rather than as a mental health rights activist.

In south Asia, the number of people who commit suicide is higher than the number who die because of road accidents, terrorism and HIV/Aids. It is among the top three causes of death in the population aged between 15 and 34.

The World Health Organisation says that over 90% of suicide cases relate to mental disorder and that more than two-thirds of all suicides are preventable. Nevertheless, mental health support barely exists in south Asia, excepting Sri Lanka, to address the growing needs of the population.

There is huge scarcity of resources to address the mental health needs of the population in south Asia (and in the developing world more generally, as Andrew Chambers explained in a recent article for Cif). The negative social attitudes towards mental health, massive underestimation of the suffering of mentally ill people, lack of political empathy, and the lack of mental health leadership are the real challenges.

Since the publication of World Health Report 2001, WHO has published a number of reports highlighting the miserable social status of those who suffer mental illness, but WHO clearly lacks the strategy to translate these reports into action.

In 2008 it launched its most ambitious scheme – the Mental Health Gap Action Programme – but I doubt that it will achieve its goals without changing its own structure to include broader civil society aspirations beyond the medical domain.

The recommendations made in the 2001 report are still a far-off dream for developing countries. Forget change outside, even within the WHO system – there is no space for mental health activists from the non-medical profession to work together in the advocacy of mental health.

There is talk about the human rights of mentally ill people, about social inclusion and the need for resources, but the international agencies, foundations and governments are badly ignoring mental health in the developing world. There is still strong resistance from the professionals against engaging with civil society to improve the system.

These are the real issues to be debated in mental health, but they are always forgotten.

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