Mental health disorders place a significant burden globally, especially in low and middle income countries where treatment access is extremely limited. Only 15-20% of those suffering receive care due to shortages of trained professionals and resources. Innovative task-sharing approaches are needed to close this gap and achieve scale, such as training community health workers. While developed countries have many psychiatrists per capita, most developing nations have far fewer - Kenya for example has just 80 psychiatrists for 40 million people. To significantly reduce the treatment gap within 10 years will require mobilizing all available resources through non-traditional, community-based approaches rather than only focusing on training more specialists.

1. REDUCING THE TREATMENT GAP IN MENTAL HEALTH IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: THE NEED TO RE-THINK THE STRATEGYBY:DAVID M. NDETEI Professor of Psychiatry University of Nairobi, Kenya &Director, Africa Mental Health Foundation (AMHF)

3. Of those 450 million people afflicted, more than 75% live in the developing world. Most do not receive care.

6. malaria,

8. cancer and are a leading cause of disability globally.

10. Integrated Innovations in Global Mental Health should involve social, scientific, and business researchers for significantly improved treatment and increased access to care for patients with mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries.

11. The strategy is to get solutions to those who need them most, quickly, effectively and at a low cost.”

13. Range of mental disorders across the life course, from autism in childhood; depression, schizophrenia and alcohol abuse in young people and adults; and dementia in older people

15. 60 million people

16. 10,000 psychiatrists

17. Mental health resources in India

18. 1.1 billion people

19. 3000 psychiatrists

20. Mental health resources in Kenya

21. 40 million people

26. If we accept that properly shifted and supervised skills can create “hands” that can be as good as those in the hands of the people with the theory

27. Professors of obstetrics and gynecology are not necessarily the best midwives neither are the doctors the best phlebotomists neither must you recite or even remember the Krebs cycle to be a good clinician. Why is it then psychiatrists are preoccupied with territorial protection against all the evidence??!!

28. If only we would move from the mind set of “territorial protection” to “commonly owned territories”; complement each other without displacing each other, focus on building whatever is positive and work on minimizing whatever divides us.

29. If only we could embrace the concept of global mental health bottom-up, starting from the local communities and resources all the way to all nations working together