Impact of the Global Mental Health Series
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The Lancet published a series of five articles on global mental health in September 2007 followed by a call to action to scale up services and protect the human rights of people with mental disorders. Apart from the launch of the Movement for Global Mental Health, major examples of impact which are described below are: the use of the call to action as the theme for global advocacy in the 2008 World Mental Health day campaign; the incorporation of the call into the WHO's new program for mental health in low and middle income countries; and a number of new initiatives to promote mental health system reforms in countries and to support mental health research.
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| Impact on global advocacy: World Mental Health Day 2008 |
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Raising awareness is the key to improving mental health policies and practices, increasing access to services, and reducing persistent stigma surrounding mental illnesses. The World Federation for Mental Health established World Mental Health Day in 1992, and coordinates and promotes its annual commemoration on October 10. It is the only annual global awareness campaign to focus specific attention on mental health and mental disorders, and is now celebrated in over 100 countries. The theme in 2008 is on “Making Mental Health A Global Priority – Scaling Up Services through Citizen Advocacy and Action.” For more information, Click here
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| Impact on global programs: the WHOs mental health gap action programme (mhGAP) |
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The World Health Organization (WHO) will officially launch the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP), its new flagship mental health program on October 9th, 2008. mhGAP provides health planners, policy-makers, and donors with a set of clear and coherent activities and programmes for scaling up care for mental and neurological disorders. The objectives of the programme are to reinforce the commitment of all stakeholders to increase the allocation of financial and human resources for care of mental and neurological disorders and to achieve higher coverage with key interventions, especially in countries with low and lower-middle incomes that have large proportions of the global burden attributable to these disorders. For more information, go to http://www.who.int/mental_health/mhGAP/en/index.html.
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| Impact on policies, resources and professional societies |
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The Lancet series was launched in London in September 2007. Since then, there have been country level launches in Australia, Brazil, Chile, and the United States, and a launch in India will take place on October 17th, 2008. All these events were attended by policy makers, consumer representatives and mental health professionals, and received wide media coverage. Presentations and symposia have been held in many countries, aimed to educate policy makers, academics, mental health professionals, NGOs, health students, and the media about the key messages of the series. The series has been profiled in a wide range of other publications, including journal articles, professional society documents and public science websites (www.scidev.net). The papers in the series are used as core teaching materials in teaching programs. A number of new research projects have been funded whose aim is to generate evidence to scale up evidence-based services for people with mental disorders. Despite the short period since publication of the series it is beginning to have a demonstrable impact on policy and mental health system development activities. It has been effectively used to support proposals for the development of mental health system reforms in Vietnam, Brazil and Indonesia.
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