30 - Mental Health: Mind Craft

Poor mental health is on the rise. Economic challenges, geopolitical crises and a changing environment are all negatively impacting mental health. Healthcare systems, however, are still struggling to tackle this crisis and public awareness often remains insufficient – this needs to change.

Since 2017, Angelini Pharma has partnered with The European House, Ambrosetti, to map mental health, its contributing factors and its potential management solutions through the ‘Headway’ initiative, with the annual report and index as outcomes. This year’s results are more alarming than ever.

For our latest report, we examined 28 countries using 55 key performance indicators to explore the status of mental health, its external factors and how countries need to individually adapt and react to growing issues. We’ve also been able to analyse, in detail, the causes of poor mental health, from the conflict in Ukraine to climate change.

This report has given us insights into a broad range of contributing factors to the worsening mental health landscape in Europe that have so far been unanalysed. In this article series, we will be exploring the different facets of that research over the coming months.

From the environmental determinants of mental health to the responsiveness of healthcare systems, numerous factors play into our collective mental well-being and never has it been more important to develop a roadmap to improve this scenario.

To understand how to build a roadmap first, we must understand mental health status.

Over 100 million people in Europe alone are living with a mental disorder. 200,000 deaths are attributed to it annually, of which 140,000 are suicides. This is equal to 4% of all registered deaths, making it one of the deadliest non-communicable diseases (NCDs) affecting European and British populations. Not only is it deadly, but it is also disabling – ranked the second most disabling of all NCDs.

The prevalence of mental disorders in Europe has also been increasing. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depressive disorders, and based on the outlook, environmentally and geopolitically, we anticipate that this number could continue to grow.

The costs alone to treat this are astronomical. Mental health conditions costs around 600 billion euros, or roughly 4% of the Europe’s collective GDP, annually. This is despite the fact that for people living with a mental health condition, the poor quality of their health and lack of adequate treatment is responsible for more than 16.9 million years lived with disabilities.

With mental health conditions on the rise, more needs to be done to support those living with a condition – especially as mental and physical health are inextricably linked.

The Headway Report clearly shows that only a united community will be able to change the unacceptable status quo of mental health and build a roadmap to shift treatment in the direction of those that need it most.

Mind craft