Mental illness can sometimes seem like an intractable, unsolvable problem. When we first began researching our Developing Mental Wealth series last May, the data showed the enormity of the issue. One in every eight of us lives with a mental disorder – 970 million people worldwide. Some 700,000 people die due to suicide each year and it’s projected that by 2030 mental health problems will be the leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally. In low-income countries where spending on mental health is tiny or non-existent, and one psychiatrist often serves a population of millions, the prognosis looked particularly bad.
Yet even in the UK, where our government spends around £13bn on mental health services annually, psychiatrists and psychotherapists are in (relatively) plentiful supply, and medication is available for free on the NHS, one in six adults polled had experienced symptoms of common mental health problems in the past week.
