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Fostering enabling environments to deliver integrated, people-centred care for mental health conditions and non-communicable diseases
Our new report titled Fostering enabling environments to deliver integrated, people-centred care for mental health conditions and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), explores key elements that can provide comprehensive people-centred mental health and NCDs services to meet people’s specific individual needs, and offers practical recommendations on how countries can reorient health systems around primary health care to place the whole person, not a single disease, at the centre.
The challenge
Many people living with mental health conditions and NCDs do not have access to quality integrated care when and where they need it most.
NCDs are the world’s leading cause of premature death, directly contributing to 74% of all deaths globally and 86% of deaths in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). At the same time, mental health conditions are responsible for 1 in every 10 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) worldwide. Despite this, health systems remain fragmented, underfunded, and ill-equipped to provide the comprehensive, people-centred care needed to close the mental health and NCD treatment gap.
The key recommendations from the report include:
Integrated, people-centred care: Governments should integrate mental health and NCD services into primary care. This is the fastest way to close the mental health and NCD treatment gap and ensure people receive the comprehensive health care they need.
Service reform: Governments should take active steps to provide human rights-based, person-centred care for people with mental health conditions by gradually shifting resources from long-stay institutions towards a comprehensive network of community-based care, including strengthening primary and secondary care.
The primary care workforce we need: The PHC workforce needs to be well equipped with mental health pre-service education and training. They need to feel well supported and supervised enough to deliver the quality of PHC necessary to effectively identify, diagnose, treat and care for people with mental health conditions and NCDs.
Domestic and donor resources should increase, improve and integrate mental health and NCD financing: To deliver optimal integrated, people-centred care, sustainable and equitable ways to finance the integration of mental health and NCDs into primary and community-based health care should be a national priority.