World Mental Health Day 2009

Did You Know?	Source: Office of Applied Studies
Among the 5.1 million adults who reported an unmet need for mental health care and did not receive mental health services in the past year, several barriers to care were reported. These included an inability to afford care (42.7 percent), believing at the time that the problem could be handled without care (28.6 percent), not knowing where to go for care (19.8 percent), and not having the time to go for care (13.9 percent).

October 10 is World Mental Health Day, a global awareness campaign promoting the critical need to bring mental health care to a higher level of importance. This year’s theme, "Mental Health in Primary Care: Enhancing Treatment and Promoting Mental Health," will address the need for mental health services to have parity within the general and primary health care system.

The World Mental Health Day 2009 campaign intends to draw worldwide attention to the growing body of knowledge on integrating mental health services into primary care and will stress the all too-often neglected fact that mental health is an integral element of every individual’s overall health and well-being.

To help bridge this gap, SAMHSA supports The Pledge for Wellness, a national wellness action plan for people with mental illness. People who suffer from serious mental illness, on average, die 25 years earlier than the general population, but most deaths are due to preventable and treatable medical conditions such as cardiovascular, pulmonary, and infectious diseases. SAMHSA’s Pledge for Wellness aims to reduce that striking disparity by reducing early mortality by 10 years over the next 10-year period.

Visit the Center for Mental Health Services