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MENTAL HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE IN LOW INCOME AREAS
What is mental health infrastructure?
Mental health infrastructure is health infrastructure treatment specific to the needs and resources of mental illnesses and instability. It includes a variety of mental health practitioners, such as psychologists, psychiatrists, and specialized therapists. There should be psychological wards and psychosocial suppprt centers, both completely separate and as a part of general hospitals. The development of psychiatric medicine and its access throughout a nation must exist. In addition to a police force, the existence of crisis response teams with training in negotiating and extraction is necessary. This is the ideal mental health infrastructure, government funded and non privatized, spread throughout many locations, with easy access and low fees. Unfortunately, this is not the reality of mental health infrastructure in most countries.
How is it distributed throughout different income areas?
Where more funding exists, there will be more health infrastructure and resources. An understandable fact. With such logic, it only makes sense that higher income countries and regions will put more money towards mental health infrastructure. According to UNICEF USA, “less than one percent of governmental health budgets in low-income countries go towards mental health”. Although higher income countries have more access to mental health facilities, counselors, and pharmaceuticals, it is important to remember that having more access does not denote the quality of the resources.
How does this distribution negatively affect low income areas?
With a lack of access to decent mental health infrastructure, the mental health of those in low income areas will greatly suffer. There are no resources to treat these wounds, so they continue to get worse and pass to others. The normalization of the cycle of abuse, substance addiction, and mental illness only leads to a high criminalization rate. It lends to the cycle of poverty, violence, and unemployment. Without a way out, low income areas will continue to suffer with a low standard of living. Unless provided with even basic psychological services, there is no way out.