In a world of relentless conflicts and wars, climate disasters, violence, discrimination, injustice and inequality, there’s no shortage of issues that can take a toll on our mental health. No one is immune. And everyone has a right to the highest attainable standard of mental health.
This includes the right to available, accessible and good quality care, as well as the right to liberty, independence and social inclusion. World Mental Health Day provides an opportunity to acknowledge and promote the importance of mental health and to prioritize availability and access to care and treatment. The theme for this year: “Mental health is a universal human right.”
Good mental health is crucial to our overall health and well-being, yet one in eight people around the world are living with mental-health conditions, according to the World Health Organization. Mental-health conditions are also affecting an increasing number of young people.
To be sure, mental health – which is misunderstood, stigmatized and often left untreated – has become a crisis. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25 per cent, with young people and women – two populations UNFPA serves – affected the most. Mental and physical health are connected, with anxiety and depression diminishing people’s quality of life as well as the lives of those around them.
In our work at UNFPA, we see women and girls who have survived mental and physical traumas including gender-based violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, obstetric fistula, online abuse and more. Other issues worsen women’s mental health, including unpaid labour, most of which is shouldered by women, and unintended pregnancy, which is often a factor in depression, according to the 2022 State of World Population report.
Further, with millions of people fleeing their homes amid protracted conflicts and climate disasters, today’s crises are becoming more widespread and complex, and they continue to take a disproportionate toll on women and girls. Such humanitarian crises produce psychological suffering and trauma that threaten people’s health and well-being and erode efforts for peacebuilding and recovery.
UNFPA is working closely with humanitarian and development partners to provide life-saving sexual and reproductive health services and to integrate urgently needed services for gender-based violence in emergencies, as well as to provide mental health and psychosocial support.
Advancing gender equality, ending gender-based violence and harmful practices, eliminating traumatic birth injuries, and providing comprehensive sexuality education and voluntary family-planning services to address unintended pregnancy all contribute to the human right of health of body and mind – not to mention a safer and more just world.
