It is 15 years since the international community has been observing October 10 as World Mental Health Day. The theme of this year’s Mental Health Day is ‘Mental health in a changing world: The impact of culture and diversity.’ As in previous years, the day will be marked with programmes that will contribute to creating awareness of the importance of mental health. Most programmes initiated with much fanfare on Mental Health Day in previous years have failed to retain momentum through the year. Hopefully, the initiatives of this year will not meet a similar fate. Creation of awareness about mental health cannot be achieved through one-off events but through a sustained effort to reach out to the public.

The importance of mental health and its centrality to our well-being has been ignored not only by the government in its public health programmes but also by us as individuals. Mental disorders and illnesses have a lot of social stigma attached to them. As a result few individuals or their families are willing to admit they have mental health problems or to seek help to address these issues. By ignoring mental health problems, people put their personal relations and relationships at work at risk. World Mental Health Day provides health authorities an opportunity to draw attention to the importance of nipping mental health problems in the bud and to dispel the many myths that surround mental health.

Countries such as India are up against another challenge when it comes to dealing with mental health and that is inadequate infrastructure and trained personnel. India can pride itself in having some of the best mental health institutions in the world. NIMHANS has a good reputation and some of its psychiatrists are among the world’s best. But the same cannot be said for some of the other mental health centres in the country where patients are known to be chained and provided rather medieval treatment. India is also confronting a problem of shortage of psychiatrists. It has two to three psychiatrists per million people compared with 50 to 150 per million in the West. The ratio is far worse in conflict zones where the proportion of people suffering from depression, trauma and stress is far higher. Psychiatrists and counsellors from cities must be encouraged to volunteer their services in areas where there help is more urgently needed.