UPSC Articles
SOCIETY/ HEALTH/ GOVERNANCE
Topic: General Studies 1,2:
- Social Empowerment
- Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health and Human Resources.
- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
Mental Healthcare
Issues
- Around 15% of India’s population suffer from poor mental health – and the number of people afflicted has been increasing steadily, from 125 million in 1990 to 197 million in 2017.
- Suicide ranks as the second-biggest cause of death among Indian adults of working age.
- India spent less than 1% of its total healthcare budget on mental health in 2017.
- Underutilization of funds, low prioritization of mental health by individual Indian states, and low coverage of health insurance for mental, neurological and substance use (MNS) disorders.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has only underscored the need for additional financing of mental health services.
Way Ahead
- Effective and innovative mental health interventions can be scaled up quickly in order to improve mental healthcare delivery in India.
- Embedding the awareness and detection of mental health problems
- Counselling and referral into well-defined care pathways through frontline workers at the community level.
- Conducting behavioural change communication campaigns to destigmatize mental health issues and to present options for care for both patients and caregivers.
- Enabling anonymous methods of seeking help, such as helplines or apps.
- Improving accessibility by leveraging digital tools and technologies.
- Strengthening mental health service delivery at the primary and secondary care levels.
- Using mobile-based (digital) decision support systems to improve patient management.
- Improving adherence to care through psycho-social education
- Setting up follow-up mechanisms or changes of treatment regimen with increased adherence.
- India needs impact financing for mental healthcare to complement public funding and for mobilizing resources from private sector and philanthropy, to bring innovative mental healthcare delivery models to scale.
