Most Active Stories Shots - Health Blog Mon October 17, 2011
Uneven Global Progress On Treatment Of Mental Illness Four years
ago, the influential medical journal The Lancet ran six papers
and assorted editorials on mental illnesses. The themed
collection, under the banner "No health without mental health,"
was a call to action for the world humanitarian community. So
how much influence did the articles have? The journal's editors
commissioned a new batch of papers to find out. The latest
reports come from researchers and policy analysts at
universities, non-governmental organizations and governments
around the world. Turns out there's been some encouraging
progress in figuring out what needs to be done, but progress in
actually getting help for people has been slow. One of the
things the new studies show is that different treatments work,
but they have to be selected carefully. For example, an analysis
of programs that address poverty — a fellow traveler with mental
illness — show that just giving people mon