Factors affecting Mental Health?

With good mental health everyone enjoys their childhood, youth, adulthood, and is able to learn better, do better, live better, maintain good relationships, and enjoy friend ships. Following factors can affect the mental health of an individual and make them stressed. 1. Family break downs 2. Academic, work, parental, pressures in children and youth. 3. Consumerism 4. Body image problems in young persons, low self-esteem ,depression , anxiety, bullying , early sexualisation in young people due to impact of social media, visual medial, and pornography.

     Why is mental health important?

Mental health affects all aspects of a child’s development including their cognitive faculties, social skills as well as their emotional well-being. Building emotional resilience is the key to good mental health and we believe there are some core attributes seen in mentally healthy and young people like, 1. The capacity to enter into and sustain mutually satisfying personal relationship. 2. Continuing progression of psychological development. 3. An ability to play and learn appropriately for their age and intellectual level. 4. A developing moral sense of right and wrong. 5. Capacity to cope with psychological stress. 6. A clear sense of identity and self- worth .

    EARLY INTERVENTION IS VITAL

Investing in early awareness services and support for the young people, not only reduces their misery and pain, but saves millions in future cost, in criminal justice system, national health schemes and education and social care costs. More than half of all adults with mental health problems were diagnosed in UK during childhood, fewer than half of them were treated appropriately.

    MENTAL SICKNESS IN CHILDREN

Research from the Indian Council of Medical Research reported that 12% children between 4 to 16 years suffered from psychiatric disorders in India. Similar studies from around the globe supported the fact that around 15% children suffer from significant mental health problems, affecting their social and physical functioning. Global studies show (Published in June 2011 of The Lancet) that one in every two adolescents globally suffers from neuro-psychiatric disorders. It further added that, one in five adolescents has an emotional, learning or development disorder while one in every eight has a serious mental disorder.

    

The issue of childhood psychiatric cases is more serious in middle and low income countries because these countries have a much larger proportion of child and adolescent population; much lower levels of health indices; poorer infrastructure and resources to deal with problems. Additionally, it is sometimes a cultural issue, with many people finding these difficult to understand and hiding them as a taboo.

    

Most common causes of disorders especially in adolescents could be depression, alcohol abuse, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. Other studies show close to 20 % Indian children suffer from some form of mental disorder, of which about 2-5 % are serious disorders including cases like autism, Schizophrenia etc.- which could also be at different levels. Irritability, sleeping and eating disorders and obsessive compulsive disorders that seem insignificant to most, if ignored, could also later manifest as more serious concerns. WHO has estimated that by 2020, mental depression will be the largest cause of disability worldwide. By 2025, mental illness will catch up with heart disease or may even overtake it as the biggest global health concern.

    

The questions we have currently are plenty. Only 1 in 50 people with mental health problems have access to treatment in developing countries (and 1 in 3 in wealthy nations). India is awfully short of psychiatrists with just 4,000 present all over the country. District mental health programmes are placed in only 123 of 640 districts, with total coverage anticipated only by 2017.