World Mental Health Day: Amid growing crisis, India allocates less than 1% health budget for mental health

World Mental Health Day 2022: The World Mental Health Day is here, a day that provides an opportunity for individuals working on mental health issues to talk about their work, and what more needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for people worldwide. The day was first observed on October 10, 1992, as an initiative of the World Federation for Mental Health - a global mental health organization. The theme for this year is 'Make mental health and well-being for all a global priority'.

According to various reports published by organizations working on mental health like India Mental Health Observatory, Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy, India is witnessing a growing number of individuals suffering from mental health issues, yet the budget allocated by the Finance Ministry for mental health is below par.

Despite growing number of suicides and other mental health issues rampant in India, the Union Budget allocated for the same is comparatively low. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Union Budget speech in February 2022 did address the mental health issues. Yet, less than 1 per cent of Rs 73,931.8 crore expenditure budget for the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) was allocated directly for mental health.

The finance minister also spoke about setting up of a National Tele-Mental Health programme, under which 23 tele-mental health centres are to be launched.

About 94 per cent of the total mental health budget has been allocated for two bodies, NIMHANS & Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi Regional Institute of Mental Health. The remaining amount is allocated for the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP), responsible for delivery of 90 per cent of the mental health services across the country.

                         ^{Data compiled by NCRB}

India Mental Health Observatory and Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy analyzed the budget and mentioned in one of their reports, “The current direct allocations for mental health are grossly insufficient, taking into consideration that 14 per cent  of India’s population lives with some form of mental illness, and there exists a treatment gap of 72–92per cent.”

On the contrary, the cases of suicides and other mental health issues spiked during the Covid-19 outbreak. The latest data of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) showed that India recorded the highest number of suicides in 2021.

As per the data, 1.64 lakh persons committed suicide — recording an increase of 7.2 per cent from 2020 when 1.53 lakh persons had killed themselves. In 2019, this figure was around 1.39 lakh, according to the data released by the NCRB in August 2022. Thus, nearly 450 people committed suicide daily in 2021.

Although, some funds has been allocated to the mental health programmes, the utilization of the funds still remained an area of confusion. “Today, the programme (NMHP) is facing an existential crisis as it does not even get to utilize the allocated funds, due to poor planning and prioritisation of mental health at both state and central government levels. The actual expenditure in 2020-21 was just $2.64 million out of the $5 million allocated. The programme has not yet adapted to India’s Mental Health Policy formulated in 2014,” mentioned United for Global Mental Health, an organization working extensively on mental health in one of their reports.