CHENNAI: India ranks low in providing mental healthcare as per a study titled ‘Mental Health and Integration’ done by The Economist Intelligence Unit. The study highlights the need of community based provisions for those suffering from mental illness. With the rise in the number of suicides every day, medicos say that mental illnesses need to be addressed as priority diseases.

India ranks 11th in a list of 15 countries of the Asia-Pacific region, in a study done to evaluate various indicators of mental health care and around 60 million people in our country suffer from some sort of mental health disorder. Yet the mental health expenditure of the country is just 0.06 per cent of the total health budget of the country. While the country’s mental health policy gave a ray of hope, it survives with a stand-alone law for mental health that was formulated in 1987.

Suicide rates in the country are 21.1 with 2,443 disability adjusted life years per lakh. Around nine percent of the population of our country suffers from mental illnesses and this is supposed to reach 20 percent by 2020, says the study. “Rising rates of suicide and mental health cases indicate that we need to stop ignoring mental illnesses and demand a system which provides a proper system of its diagnosis and treatment. We neither have functioning mental health promotion and prevention programme nor a suicide prevention strategy. Integrated services and resources should be directed to provide community mental health facilities,” says Dr Jessie Raju, a renowned psychologist.

As per the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) mental health atlas, India did not have an officially approved mental health policy until 2014. “According to WHO statistics on mental health, India has only 0.6 mental health workers in the country and since the last five years, doctors in primary health centers have not received in-service training on mental health. There are only around 43 mental hospitals in the country for such a large population,” said Dr Vivian Kapil, a senior psychiatrist at Meenakshi Medical College Hospital. “Apart from lack of awareness, inadequate number of mental hospitals, less mental health workforce and undefined treatment facilities, we do not have funds allocation for care of mental disorders in the country.

An individual does not have the right to sound mental health though mental health care is as significant as physical health care,” says Dr R Shanthi, member of the Doctors’ Association for Social Equality.