Title:
Calling Attention to Mental Health as a 'Neglected
Issue'
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
Sunday, October tenth, was World Mental Health Day.
This year's observance centered on the relationship
between mental health and chronic physical
conditions like diabetes and cancer. The World
Health Organization says more than four hundred
fifty million people suffer from poor mental health.
The most common disorders are depression and
schizophrenia. Mental health experts also include
other disorders like drug and alcohol abuse that
affect millions of people. Elena Berger is with the
World Federation for Mental Health. That
organization, based in the United States, held the
first World Mental Health Day in nineteen
ninety-two. Mrs. Berger says mental health problems
are most severe in poor countries that lack the
resources to deal with them. She says in developing
countries, a huge number of people, up to
eighty-five percent, cannot get any form of mental
health treatment. Experts say about half of all
mental health problems first appear before the age
of fifteen. The countries with the highest
percentages of young people are in the developing
world. That means they are also the countries with
the poorest levels of mental health resources. The
WHO says many low- and middle-income countries have
only one child psychiatrist for every one to four
million people.Worldwide, depression is the leading
mental health problem, and a leading cause of
disability. In two thousand two, the World Health
Organization estimated that more than one hundred
fifty-four million people suffered from depression.
But Elena Berger from the mental health federation
says other kinds of diseases often get more
attention. She says people pay more attention to
communicable diseases and not enough attention to
mental health conditions. She says these are real
disabilities where people are not able to work to
their full ability and cannot earn an income. So
there is a strong effect on families as well. Mrs.
Berger says her organization and the WHO are pushing
to have governments include mental health care in
their development goals. She says this could greatly
improve the availability of treatment and services
worldwide. She says people with mental disabilities
would be recognized as groups that need special
support and not be excluded and ignored.For VOA
Special English I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
