Our world faces a mental health pandemic as serious as the one that changed our lives forever in 2020. According to the 2022 World Mental Health Report, there were 970 million people living with mental disorders globally in 2019, including 14% of the world’s adolescents.
Combined, these factors result in mental health disorders, such as psychological distress, inability to concentrate, depression, anxiety, suicide, hopelessness and feelings of worthlessness. This is evident in our phenomenon of absent fathers, which deprives children of the opportunity to be brought up by both parents, which has been shown to confer a massive developmental advantage.
This hampers the vision of improving mental health among South Africans as espoused in the National Mental Health Policy and Strategic Framework 2013 – 2020. By the time mental health disorders require psychiatric hospitalisation, we have usually failed in our duty of care to the patient at primary, community-based interventions. In addition, there is a shortage of mental health specialists, such as psychologists and psychiatrists. Most of the available specialists are concentrated in the private health system and people who have medical aids, with few available to the broader population that is dependent on the public health system.
The conference sought to mobilise society and create a movement of stakeholders to promote mental health awareness, as well as increase access to mental health care.
Health Health Latest News, Health Health Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: SABCNews - 🏆 37. / 51 Read more »
Source: eNCA - 🏆 49. / 51 Read more »