The World Health Organization and Mental Health

Article Outline

• References
• Copyright

I recently had the honor of speaking on the broad topic of mental health to undergraduate students in South Korea. None of the students were health professionals so the presentation was geared to the general student, with particular attention to what could be done to make mental health services more available and acceptable in their country. I was not totally unaware of the needs of the country. I have had some long-term involvement in mental health in Korea, participating in the first United Nations Development Project, which provided funding for service provision for mentally ill individuals.

In preparation for my presentation, I reviewed all of the recent mental health-related work and publications from the World Health Organization (WHO). I was so pleased with what I found that I thought it worthy of highlighting the work here. There were several noteworthy developments including the current WHO tagline for the recent mental health Gap Action Program activities: “No health without mental health” (WHO, 2009).

One important recent relevant publication to all of our work is the nursing report (WHO, 2007). This report includes several recommendations that should guide mental health work in all countries. These recommendations include the following: (a) recognize nurses as essential human resources for mental health, (b) ensure that adequate numbers of nurses are trained to provide mental health care, and (c) incorporate a mental health component into basic and postbasic nursing education. Although I found these recommendations laudable, particularly given the status of mental health education for nurses in many countries, I also found myself wishing that the report had gone even farther in the recommendations. The authors acknowledged the need for nurses to participate in policy making regarding mental health, so why not recommend key representation in this arena. Why not even recommend leadership and health policy content in postbasic nursing education? Further, the report stopped short of addressing the need for mental health nurse researchers and the significant contributions that could be made by preparing more nurse scientists. Nurse researchers very often embrace the biobehavioral understandings of health and illness, and nursing intervention research addresses this holistic perspective. More nurse scientists would contribute much to the developing understandings of mental health and illness and, importantly, to evaluating key interventions.

Rather than remaining disillusioned, I quickly reminded myself of the need to take small steps first before trying to run the marathon. More importantly, I reminded myself of the need for basic education in the mental health for nurses, education that could and would serve as the foundation for all of the other challenges and complexities in understanding mental health and illness.

Back to Article Outline

References 

1. World Health Organization . ATLAS nurses in mental health 2007. Geneva, Switzerland: Author; 2007;
   • View In Article
2. World Health Organization . Mental health. Retrieved October 15, 2009 at http://www.who.int/mental_health/en/2009;
   • View In Article