The UN ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs), due to be launched later this year, will dominate the post-2015 UN development agenda. Given the increasing concerns from all quarters about continued population growth and the increasing prevalence of consumption-oriented ways of living, it is unsurprising that these goals have focused on sustaining ecosystems, natural resources, water and agricultural practices.
Interestingly, a new goal has been added about climate change that states: “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. This move towards tackling these multifaceted geo-socio-political issues, is an important development, as the easy-to-understand ‘Millennium Development Goals’ arguably did not address these more complex issues that have the potential to cause massive health impacts on a global scale this century, let alone this millennia! Including mental health impacts.
Developing these SDGs that aim to address these complex issues is not easy, and the UN should be applauded for attempting to tackle them in this new set of goals. HOWEVER…. there is little reference to mental health. This is despite the fact that neuropsychiatric disorders make up about 14% of global disease related burden, with depression the leading global cause of disability. However, mental health services receive disproportionately low resources: the average across countries is under 4% of overall health-care budgets.
A vital initiative called FundaMentalSDG is lobbying the UN to include mental health in these SDGs. The college are in support of this initiative and I urge all members to sign up to this important agenda here. Getting mental health as a goal on the SDGs is crucial in achieving parity of esteem for mental health, it is also crucial to social inclusion, equity, justice and sustainable economic development.
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