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Mental health resources in the world: results from Project Atlas of the WHO.

2002; National Institutes of Health; Volume: 1; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

Benedetto Saraceno, Shekhar Saxena,

Primary Care and Health Outcomes

An estimated 450 million people alive today suffer from mental or behavioural disorders or from psychosocial problems such as those related to alcohol and drug abuse (1). Mental disorders account for a substantial proportion of disease disability and burden, yet current resources for mental health are grossly inadequate. It is indeed a paradox that though substantial information is available on the incidence, prevalence, course, diagnosis, classification, disability and burden of mental disorders, hardly any information is available on the resources that exist to respond to this burden (2). Over the last several decades, the interest in evaluating mental health care processes has greatly increased and there are calls for development of increased information and research on mental health services (3-9). Individual country information about mental health resources from some of the developed and rich countries is available, but very little is known from most of the developing and poor countries. The information that does exist cannot be compared across countries, because reports use varying definitions and units of measurement. This imbalance between 'disease information' and 'resources information' is a major impediment to planning mental health services. Lack of information on resources also hampers efforts made by nongovernmental organizations, professional associations and consumer groups to demand improvement of mental health care services and to highlight specific needs (2). The need to improve mental health services and integrate mental health into primary care was emphasized by most of the Ministers of Health who attended the World Health Assembly, 2001 (10). Project Atlas was launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000, with the basic aim of collecting, compiling and disseminating information related to mental health resources from the WHO Member States.