Mental Health Day Links
Mind and Body

The campaign for World Mental Health Day 2005 builds on the 2004 theme of the links between physical and mental health, including co-occurring mental illnesses and physical disorders such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and HIV/AIDS.

Benedetto Saraceno, director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse of the World Health Organization (WHO), was the symposium's keynote speaker. He emphasized the growing recognition of the intricate relationship between disorders of the mind and the body.

"The complex challenges presented by the comorbidity of mental and physical disorders would be much better addressed throughout the world with integral care strategies that focus on the patient and the community," he said. "The experts need to talk among themselves, because this comorbidity between the physical and mental clearly demands vertical, not horizontal, intervention. Clinical comorbidity is the rule, not the exception."

PAHO Director Mirta Roses said that mental disorders represent a growing proportion of the burden of illness in Latin America and the Caribbean. Some 114 million people in the Americas suffered some type of mental disorder in 1990, a figure that is projected to increase to 176 million by the 2010.

Roses noted that in many parts of the Americas, treatment is often unavailable for those who need it. She cited a recent Mexico study that showed that as many as 80 percent of patients diagnosed with a mental disorder have received no care or treatment in the previous 12 months.

PAHO estimates that a quarter of the adult population in Latin America and the Caribbean suffers from mental illness at some point in their lifetime. Studies suggest that the prevalence of mental disorders in children ranges from 21 percent in the United States to 12–29 percent in developing countries such as Colombia. More than 5 million people in the region are believed to suffer from epilepsy, yet only 1.5 million of these are identified and properly treated.

José Luis Di Fabio, PAHO area manager for Technology and Health Services, said prior to the symposium that "mental health is a priority for PAHO. We are collaborating with the countries to integrate it into primary care, because this is the best way to achieve integral care for mental and physical problems, which are so frequently associated."

Other participants included Maryland Pao, deputy clinical director for the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program; Thomas Wise, INOVA Systems medical director of behavioral services in the United States; José Miguel Caldas de Almeida, chief of PAHO's Mental Health and Specialized Programs; and Preston J. Garrison, secretary general and CEO of the World Federation of Mental Health.

World Mental Health Day was established in 1992 by the World Federation of Mental Health as an annual worldwide global public awareness and education campaign to promote public understanding of mental health and mental and behavioral disorders.