About 450 million people live with mental illness worldwide. Take a minute wherever you are and look around. Be it in an office, walking in the supermarket or even on the train. Of every four people you see, one will suffer a mental illness in their lifetime.
These figures make mental illness among the top causes of ill health globally. According to WHO, depressive disorders rank fourth in the global disease burden and are expected to rank 2nd by 2020. By 2030 this crisis is expected to cost the world upwards of $16 trillion.
What, if anything, can ordinary citizens of the world do to be part of the solution to this crisis? Here are five ways you can make a mark.
1. Get Licensed
Contributing to the mental health crisis is a lack of proper diagnosis. In 2010, South Africa had 1.58 mental healthcare professionals per 100,000 patients. Argentina had 13.19. In the U.S, 65% of non-metropolitan counties lack a single psychiatrist.
On an individual level, taking mental health courses equips and exposes you to the various mental health issues likely to be present in your community.
By getting licensed, you can join other caregivers with the same goals of walking patients through their issues, and hopefully seeing them through their recovery journey. Similarly, this will bring down mental health care to community level making it even more accessible.
2. Engage in Volunteer Work
Volunteering gives you the opportunity to serve and make a difference, even if you don’t necessarily want to pursue a formal career in mental health sciences.
And the scope for a volunteer is even wider. You can offer your support to mental health institutions, mental health trainer’s as well as advocacy groups and policy-making institutions.
3. Add Your Voice to Public Awareness Programs
Another way to bring about change at the community level is talking about and lifting the veil on mental illness. Some of the mystery around it is in the lack of outward injury.
What does this mean? Take depression for example. People may find it easier to sympathize with someone with a bleeding cut or someone who is vomiting than with someone whose pain does not manifest outwardly.
The lack of physical symptoms creates a disconnect where society almost expects suffers to “get over it.”
By speaking about it and creating awareness over your social media platforms, over casual discussions and with family, each individual can help bring the reality of mental health illnesses to the fore, and hopefully, those afflicted can start getting the support and understanding they require.
4. Offer Professional Integration
This is not about providing an artificially protected environment, but providing psychiatric patients with economically efficient activities. Spain, Italy, and China have successful projects where people with mental disorders are absorbed into a productive workforce.
This is actionable for business owners and recruitment professionals as well as well-meaning citizens with occasional jobs or errands that you can safely engage someone in the recovery process.
This integration allows productivity and a sense of normalcy which in turn can accelerate healing and reduce the feeling of being stigmatized or segregated.
5. Hold Hands with Lobby Groups for Mental Healthcare
Lobbyists have programs designed to push for change in mental health care. These can be policy changes, better health services and even an increase in funding for both treatment, management, and mental health research.
Some of these require petitions that are then presented to the national government, public health organizations, municipalities or even directly to community hospitals.
What you can do is increase the numbers and create awareness on these campaigns. Anything from signing the petitions to using your social media handles to get the word out and to encourage others to come on board makes a difference in such campaigns.
Final Say
While it’s easy to feel like your efforts are drops in an ocean, no effort towards the mental health crisis is too small to make a difference.
Even helping someone in their recovery journey, or just listening to a friend or kin when they express feelings of sadness and gloom, is in itself a huge leap in the right direction.
This post was sponsored by Andrej Kovacevic
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