World crisis is causing suicide rise: WHO
Pastor Dale Morgan
World crisis is causing suicide rise: WHO*
October 10, 2008 - 7:46AM
The global economic crisis is causing an upsurge in suicides and mental
illness as people struggle to cope with losing their homes or
livelihoods, the World Health Organisation has warned.
"We should not be surprised or underestimate the turbulence and the
likely consequences of the financial crisis," WHO Director General
Margaret Chan on Thursday told a meeting of mental health care
professionals in Geneva.
"It should not come as a surprise if we continue to see more stresses,
more suicides and more mental disorders," she said.
Just this week, a 45-year-old business school graduate in Los Angeles
shot dead five members of his family before killing himself, telling
police in a suicide letter that he had been driven to the deed because
of his dire economic situation.
The Los Angeles case came less than a week after a 90-year-old woman in
the US state of Ohio shot herself as she was about to be served an
eviction notice on the home she has lived in for the past 38 years.
However, Chan stressed that the majority of people worldwide suffering
from mental illness live in low- and middle-income countries, where
there is an "abysmal lack of care," inadequate mental health care
budgets and where victims suffer from social stigma and discrimination.
Chan was speaking at the launch of the WHO's Mental Health Gap Action
Programme which aims to redress the balance.
The WHO estimates that three quarters of the global burden of
neuropsychiatric disorders falls in low -and middle- income countries,
and that in these countries, around three quarters of affected people
cannot afford treatment.
"Care for these highly prevalent, persistent, and debilitating disorders
is not a charity. It is a moral and ethical duty," Chan said.