THE World Health Organisation (WHO), yesterday, confirmed that over 116 million people in Africa were living with mental health conditions prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.
It, therefore, called on African nations to strengthen mental health and psychosocial response in humanitarian emergencies, including Covid-19 and Ebola, which have a significant negative impact on school-age children and healthcare workers.
WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, who disclosed this in a message to mark the 2022 World Mental Health Day with the theme, “Make Mental Health and Wellbeing for All a Global Priority”, submitted that the exponential rates of alcohol use and abuse among adolescents remain particularly worrisome.
According to her, the theme serves as a reminder that, after nearly three years, the Covid-19 pandemic’s social isolation, fear of illness and death as well as difficult socio-economic conditions have contributed to an estimated 25 per cent global rise in depression and anxiety.
She observed that the global event, which holds every October 10, provides an opportunity to draw attention to Africa’s large and growing burden of mental health conditions, with children and adolescents worst impacted.
Moeti stressed the need to urgently strengthen regulatory systems to close the gaps that allow such young people to easily access alcohol, contributing to heavy episodic drinking rates as high as 80 per cent among teens from 15 to 19 years, adding that the situation poses a serious threat to their education, while setting the stage for a lifetime alcohol abuse and associated risks of non-communicable and related diseases.
Her words: “Inadequate financing for mental health continues to be the biggest limitation, negatively impacting efforts to expand Africa’s mental health workforce. As things stand, there are fewer than two mental health workers for every 100,000 people, the majority of whom are psychiatric nurses and mental health nursing aids. With these scarce resources concentrated at large psychiatric institutions in urban areas, people at community and primary care levels are left critically underserved. For example, while two-thirds of member-states report having guidelines to integrate mental health into primary healthcare, fewer than 11 per cent are providing pharmacological and/or psychological interventions at this level.”
