SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being | SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
Institutions: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
The World Health Organizationβs World Mental Health Today 2025 underscores that mental disorders have become the second leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide, while depression and anxiety together cost the global economy nearly US $1 trillion annually in lost productivity. Despite this, mental health continues to receive only about two percent of national health budgets, reflecting a severe imbalance between burden and investment.
The Mental Health Atlas 2024 provides a sharper view for the South-East Asia Region, which includes India. More than eighty percent of people with mental health conditions in the region receive no adequate care. The mental health workforce remains critically thin, with fewer than two specialists per 100,000 population compared to a global median of over thirteen. The Atlas also records that half of countries in the region have adopted suicide prevention strategies, and all report at least some functional mental health promotion and prevention programmes, yet financing and service coverage remain insufficient.
Together, the two reports highlight the urgency of integrating mental health into universal health coverage and accelerating investments in services and workforce across South-East Asia.
Follow the full reports here:
https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/382343/9789240113817-eng.pdf
https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/382452/9789240114487-eng.pdf