The most rapidly growing cause of disability and loss of human potential and productivity emanates from mental health conditions. Mental illness was the largest source of loss in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) globally, according to the 2011 World Economic Forum.
Additionally, research from Harvard Medical School and the University of Queensland finds that one out of every two people in the world will develop a mental health disorder in their lifetime. (This study was based upon a large-scale study including more than 150,000 adults across 29 countries.)
In 2019, there were 970 million people globally with mental problems, or one in every eight individuals according to the World Health Organization (WHO). “For many people, this is an increasingly anxious, unhappy and lonely world. Complex transformations—societal, technological and work-related—are having a profound impact on people’s lived experiences,” according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, 2019. “A common theme is psychological stress related to a feeling of lack of control in the face of uncertainty,” the report cited.
The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on youth mental health report (2024) found that the trend of deteriorating mental health in youth has accelerated over the past two decades and that this can be seen as an early warning signal for global disaster, given how dependent societies are on their contributions.
What are the factors accelerating this decline?
The Lancet report cites such global mega-trends as social, economic, political and technological, and other changes in societies around the world in the past two decades “have harmed mental health of youth and increased mental ill health among them.” Based upon these findings, it is important to examine the social determinants that impact the social conditions people are being exposed to.
If this is true, it follows that the social determinants, which encompass the structural conditions people are exposed to, are becoming more harmful. This is because, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), our exposure to protective or harmful determinants are “shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels,” which are influenced by policy choices. These structural conditions include income, employment, socioeconomic status, education, food security, housing, social support, discrimination, healthcare accessibility and childhood adversity, as well as social and physical neighborhood conditions.
Though there is an overwhelming need for the provision of adequate mental healthcare for young people, only a minority are accessing it even in high resource environments, according to the Lancet report. “Young people have a raw deal from society on so many fronts in recent years in terms of their economic precarity, and threats like climate change, housing insecurity and tertiary education fees.,” explains Patrick McGorry, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, and Lead on the Lancet Commission report. Neglect of their mental health addsanother twist to this. Older people assume that today’s youth possess a lack of resilience, and only when their kids need help, do they finally understand,” McGorry adds. In fact, the report recommends that economic imperatives become an important part of mental healthcare. This would help place the onus on societies, where the roots of the problems are based. “If the focus is on the individual then it leads to attempts to boost resilience rather than address the real causes which are more challenging and relate to sickness of the society. Rampantly increasing inequality is a major culprit and consequence of unbridled and unbalanced neoliberalism for the past few decades,” Dr. McGorry concludes.
This explanation can be taken one step further. Extreme psychological hazards have emerged over decades, with centuries of systemic inequalities in place. It’s exhibited in the dominant culture as it “standardizes” pathways to “normalcy” and “success,” defining reality for its society as the dominant culture’s norm under the bell-shaped curve. In turn, leaving some of us with mental ill health trying to assimilate and accommodate the dominant structure to succeed or just get along, i.e. live. Others could be diagnosed with mental ill health because they are squares and the norm is round.
These extreme psychological hazards are perhaps best explained by “The specter of individual discontent metastasizing into a systemic threat, as a populist sentiment fueled by economic frustrations and divisions within multiethnic societies, lead[ing] to upheavals.” We are witnessing this now. The report further cites that “a world of increasingly angry people would be likely to generate volatile electoral results and to increase the risk of social unrest…If empathy were to decline, the risks might be even starker.”
Culture providing a “better lens of understanding” by moving beyond a westernized approach is also highlighted in the Lancet report. It can determine whether young people seek help for mental health problems, their perception of emotions and emotional changes and perceptions of mental health. The trend of declining mental ill health among young people over the past two decades and its subsequent warning signs is exemplified by the above statistics. Still, global health budgets devote only “2% to mental healthcare and even in the richest countries less than half of the need is addressed,” according to the Lancet report. In high resource settings, youth mental healthcare and reform are still lacking. In low resource settings, reform is only beginning. Ninety percent of 10 to 24-year-olds, the age of mental ill health onset, live in low to middle income countries.
How do we respond to this youth crisis?
“The most urgent thing is to expand youth friendly mental healthcare at [the] primary and specialist team level of 12 to 25-year-olds across the globe,” Dr. McGorry explains. “We must understand the megatrends better or we will fall for simplistic and populist “solutions” such as banning access to social media as Haidt proposed and is actually happening in Australia.”
One solution that has been proposed in the global risks report suggests that companies become more proactive in addressing mental health issues and social isolation, while initiating a reinvention of the safety nets crucial to workers’ security within the workplace. In short, to reimagine the workplace.
But, while we’re reimagining the workplace, let’s not stop there. We also need to increase comprehensive mental health support while building savvy educational and sociopolitical systems.
About the Author: Jacquese Armstrong is a fellow with The Loreen Arbus Accessibility is Fundamental Program, a fellowship created with Women’s eNews to train women with disabilities as professional journalists so that they may write, research and report on the most crucial issues impacting the disabilities community.
