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WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY 2003
TO PROMOTE IMPROVED SERVICES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
For Immediate Release
For Information Contact:
Deborah Maguire
[email protected]
15 April 2003
The future of our society depends on the emotional health of our young
people. However, many children have adolescent and behavioral problems
that interfere with healthy development and functioning. Left unrecognized
and untreated, many of these problems continue into adulthood and can
severely limit educational, work and social achievement.
The World Health Organization estimates that worldwide up to 20% of
children and adolescents have a mental health disorder serious enough
to need professional attention. Yet, fewer than one in five received
needed treatment. It is possible that, by 2020, child and adolescent
emotional and behavioral disorders could rise proportionately by fifty
percent throughout the world to become one of the five most common causes
of death, illness and disability among children.
On 10 October 2003, World Mental Health Day, the global mental health
education program of the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH), will
launch a worldwide, yearlong public awareness and advocacy campaign to
focus increased attention on the needs of children and adolescents who
are experiencing emotional and behavioral problems, promote the planning,
funding and development of increased and improved mental health services
for young people, and encourage citizen advocacy to support the adoption
by national governments of child and adolescent mental health policies.
According to WFMHs President L. Patt Franciosi, Few
national government policies designed specifically to support
child and adolescent
mental health exist worldwide. In fact, a recent survey of
national mental health policies did not find a single country
with a mental health policy
strictly pertaining to children and adolescents, although
34 countries were found to have identifiable mental health
policies that may have
some beneficial impact on children and adolescents. The absence
of policy is a major barrier to the development of coherent
systems of mental health
care for children and adolescents.
The 2003 World Mental Health Day campaign theme focuses on emotional
and behavioral disorders of children and adolescents, Dr. Franciosi
stated, because so many young people around the world are not
receiving the attention they deserve. This years campaign will
help to increase worldwide awareness and advocacy concerning
the devastating effects of emotional and behavioral disorders
on the lives of children
and adolescents. We expect that public awareness, education
and advocacy activities commemorating World Mental Health
Day will be held in over
100 countries.
2003 marks the eleventh year that the World Federation for Mental Health
has organized the World Mental Health Day global mental health education
campaign. WFMH is an international multidisciplinary organization founded
in 1948 to advance among all people and nations, the prevention of mental
and emotional disorders, the proper treatment and care of those with
such disorders, and the promotion of mental health.
Copies of the World Mental Health Day campaign packet can be obtained
by contacting WFMH at [email protected] or at 1-703-838-7543.
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