Most People Worldwide Lack Good Treatment for Mental Illness

About 93% of people worldwide who struggle with mental health or substance abuse issues aren’t getting adequate care, a new report finds.

In many cases, people affected by mental illness do not recognize that they have a diagnosable condition, the Canadian research team found.

But even when diagnoses are made, treatment is often lacking.

Men seemed more likely to go untreated than women, the study found.

Globally, “women were 50% more likely to receive effective treatment despite men having more than twice the substance use disorders prevalence and suicide death rate than women,” wrote a team led by Dr. Daniel Vigo. He’s an associate professor of psychiatry and population and public health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

The new data came from World Health Organization surveys involving nearly 57,000 participants in 21 countries, conducted over a 19-year period.

Countries included the United States and Japan, as well as many nations in Western and Eastern Europe and South America.

Participants all met standard criteria for having a mental illness, including substance abuse disorders. People were quizzed on whether they:

Recognized their need for treatment
Made contact with the healthcare system about it
Received a minimum level of adequate treatment
Received effective treatment

Less than half (46.5%) recognized that they had a condition that merited treatment, the researchers reported.

In the group that did recognize their need for treatment, only about a third (34.1%) said they tried to turn to their country’s medical system for help.

When they did seek out help, about 83% got what the researchers called a “minimum” level of care for their condition, and in that group about half (47%) ended up getting “effective treatment,” the research showed.

Taking into account all the people who failed to get diagnosed or treated along the way, Vigo’s team estimated that only 6.9% of people surveyed made their way to effective treatment.

The new research is a starting point to mending broken mental healthcare systems, Vigo said.

“Understanding where the bottlenecks are for each of these disorders provides a unique and previously unavailable blueprint for decision makers to understand problems objectively and try to adjust the system,” he said in a university news release.

Besides the notable “gender gap” in mental health care worldwide, folks with lower levels of education were also more prone to miss out on diagnosis and treatment, the study found.

The data highlights “the importance of bridging the gap in effective treatment for men and people with lower education,” Vigo and colleagues wrote.

One way to boost levels of care might be to better educate primary care physicians, Vigo said.

“Improving the ability of these general practitioners and family doctors to diagnose and treat the mild to moderate forms, and to know when to refer more severely affected folks to specialists, becomes the cornerstone of the system,” he explained.

The study was published Feb. 5 in JAMA Psychiatry.

More information

If you’re experiencing any form of mental health crisis, reach out 24/7 to the free 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

SOURCE: University of British Columbia, news release, Feb. 7, 2025

Source: HealthDay