POOR COUNTRIES NEGLECT MENTALLY ILL: WHO

WHO TARGETS POOR COUNTRIES
FOR TREATMENT OF MENTAL ILLNESS

www.voanews.com - The World Health Organization is launching new guidelines to simplify the treatment of mental and neurological disorders. The number of people suffering from mental health disorders is huge and an overwhelming majority does not receive the care they need. The World Health Organization estimates worldwide, more than 150 million people suffer from depression. About 125 million are affected by alcohol-use disorders and millions more suffer from diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
The World Health Organization says more than 75 percent of people with mental, neurological and substance use disorders living in developing countries do not receive any treatment or care. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan says people in poor countries miss out on care because it is generally believed that sophisticated and expensive technologies are essential in improving mental health. The WHO says people with mental neurological and substance use disorders are often stigmatized and subject to neglect and abuse. In the majority of countries, it says less than 2 % of health funds are spent on mental health. The program will help nurses recognize people suffering with depression in their day-to-day work and provide psychosocial assistance.

Dr. Chan says the new guidelines provide a simple technical tool for detecting, diagnosing, and managing the most common mental health problems anywhere. With this guide, she says busy doctors, nurses and medical assistants will be able to provide needed care despite lack of money and sophisticated facilities. The World Health Organization has begun implementing the guidelines in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Panama, Sierra Leone and Solomon Islands.



Patients with mental or neurological disorders or substance abuse are often stigmatized, neglected and abused. In most countries they only spent on mental health less than 2% of the funds available for health, said the WHO. Mental health services do not require sophisticated and expensive technologies, it is only necessary to understand which is the real insanity and try to solve the real problems: birth, aging, sickness and death. True insanity is spend your life just talking all kinds of nonsense and do not solve these four problems that cause suffering to humanity.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

People are being misguided. They are being kept in darkness. Let us start to give them some ligh. ... Physical well-being automatically follows spiritual well-being. ... Suppose you have a car. So, naturally, you take care of the car as well as yourself. But you don’t identify yourself as the car. You don’t say, “I am this car.” That is nonsense. But this is what people are doing. They are taking too much care of the bodily “car,” thinking that the car is the self. They forget that they are different from the car, that they are a spirit soul and have a different business. Just as no one can drink petrol and be satisfied, no one can be satisfied with bodily activities. One must find out the proper food for the soul. If a man thinks, “I am a car, and I must drink this petrol,” he is considered insane. Similarly, one who thinks that he is this body, and who tries to become happy with bodily pleasures, is also insane.

Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
“The Science of Self Realization”
Chapter I - “Learning the Science of the Self”
“Reincarnation and Beyond”