By Prathiba Raju and Abhijeet Singh
New Delhi: Acknowledging the looming mental health crisis in the country the Economic Survey 2023-24 tabled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the parliament today has highlighted several economic constraints associated with it and has come up with some potential suggestions to deal with them.
The Finance ministry document states that, “Mental health disorders are associated with significant productivity loss and citing the National Mental Health Survey (NMHS) 2015-16, it notes that 10.6 per cent adults in the country suffered from mental disorders while the treatment gap ranged between 70 per cent and 92 per cent for different disorders. With 13.5 per cent the prevalence of mental morbidity was higher in urban metro regions as compared to rural areas which have 6.9 per cent and urban non-metro areas with 4.3 per cent morbidity rate.”
For addressing gaps in the existing programmes to maximise their effectiveness and accelerating the improvements made in mental healthcare the survey has outlined several key policy changes such as increasing the number of psychiatrists, from 0.75 psychiatrists per lakh population in 2021 to the WHO norm of 3 per lakh population; Developing comprehensive guidelines for the excellence centers; Standardisation of guidelines for mental-health services across government and private sector.
Furthermore it also banks on opting a bottom-up, whole-of-community approach; Involving individuals with personal experience with mental health problems; Assessing the effectiveness of the programmes by gathering feedback from the users, professionals, and stakeholders; Partnering with NGOs to scale up efforts among others.
Expressing the views on the survey, Dr Rumki Majumdar, Economist, Deloitte India, said, “Interestingly, in this survey, there has been a crucial dialogue on mental health, highlighting a significant treatment gap in India and it underscores the urgency of translating policy into action and addressing gaps such as enhancing mental health infrastructure. By bringing such discussion to the fore, a significant step is made that can go a long way in providing rights-based treatment and protecting the rights of people with mental disabilities.”
