Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Eric Ip & Daisy Cheung on Global Mental Health Security—Time for Action (JAMA Health Forum)

Published in June 2020
Global health security has been concerned predominantly with organizing transnational collective action to prevent the risks of bioterrorism and infectious disease outbreaks, such as the Ebola crisis of 2014-2016.1 One confounding omission in global health security has been mental health. The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), currently a partnership of more than 60 sovereign states plus the World Health Organization (WHO), other international institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and private companies, is committed to “a world safe and secure from infectious disease threats.” Of its 8 Action Packages, from antimicrobial resistance to biosecurity to zoonotic disease, none pertains directly to mental health. The WHO’s Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, which gauges global preparedness not just for outbreaks but also health emergencies, makes no meaningful reference to mental health in its first annual report, released in September 2019.2 None of the 6 indicators on the Global Health Security index, developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and The Economist Intelligence Unit, even mentions mental health... Click here to read the full article.

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