Challenges abound in Kenya as world marks mental health week

It is the World Mental Health Awareness week. Unlike other years in the past, the current celebration is happening in an unprecedented health, financial and social gloom.

Combined, they have created a perfect recipe for a mental health tsunami. All the usual stressors and triggers of mental health have been amplified.

Traditionally, stressors have been bumped into financial, emotional, social relationships at work, home or on the romantic front and physical health. All these could be accentuated by environmental impacts.

The 2020 theme, Move for mental health: Increased investment in mental health, draws attention to the huge gaps in funding for its infrastructure and personnel.

You only need to look at the local example to see this; save for Mathari mental hospital, no other notable public mental health service provider exists. Though a sprinkling of specialists in private and public facilities exist, they are not enough.

Part of the problem could be the non-disclosure of mental illness by individuals, despite almost all other forms of illness having a mental health component.

The World Health Organisation intimates that 25 percent of the world will be afflicted by a mental health condition in their lifetime. Presently, 450 million people have a mental health condition according to the same source.

Substance abuse, a growing global concern, is also linked with a risk of the rates rising further.

Left unattended, some mental health conditions such as depression result in suicides, which are responsible for a worrying 1.4 percent of global deaths. Of concern, is the fact that 79 percent of these are in low- and middle-income countries.

At the core, is how we fund mental health. For a long time, it was under the wings of religious organisations and charities. The problem is that this solo approach has been inadequate.

Mary Wahome, is a psychologist and executive director of Reason to Hope, a mental health and psychosocial support organisation. She says it is a challenge in society, often stigmatised creating barriers towards seeking early care. As a result, many suffer in silence for potentially manageable causes. This group, is at highest risk.

She says there is urgent need for society to rethink the problem. Beyond the financial investments, identifying the root cause of the mental health triggers, is crucial. Without investment in these approaches, we risk exposing more of our citizens to harm.

According to Mary, insurers shy away from reimbursing mental health conditions at same levels as other medical conditions because it is very expensive to manage in a hospital setting.

As such, community health engagement models need to be adopted as well as preventive compared from curative approaches. Here a holistic approach encompassing education, religious, psychiatrists and psychologists as well as human resource personnel come together.

Our fraying social networks and cultures need to be strengthened to provide care in loving, confines of your home.