Africa-Press – Angola. Only 29 percent of countries in Africa, where more than half the population is under the age of 24, have mental health policies for children and adolescents, the United Nations warned yesterday.
“The biggest challenge to the adequate provision of mental health services in Africa is the chronically low investment by governments,” said World Health Organization (WHO) director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, in a statement on World Mental Health Day, signed yesterday.
“The psychological suffering in which hundreds of thousands of children and parents live across the continent has a strong impact on individuals and, by extension, on the well-being and development of societies,” warned Mohamed Malick Fall, Regional Director for Africa. East and South of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in the same statement.
According to the United Nations, Africa has less than one child mental health professional (0.2) and fewer than two (1.6) adult mental health specialists per 100,000 inhabitants, despite the record of almost 37 million adolescents (aged 10-19) with mental disorders on the continent.
According to the WHO, one in four children live with a parent who suffers from a mental disorder. The organization also recorded an increase in alcohol consumption among young people, which “may be linked to mental health problems”.
More than 80 percent of alcohol drinkers aged between 15 and 19 in Angola, Central African Republic (CAR), Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRCongo), Equatorial Guinea and Gabon occasionally consume large amounts of alcohol .
On the other hand, Africa is the region with the highest rate of suicide deaths in the world, the WHO warned last week.
About eleven out of 100,000 people die annually by suicide in Africa, above the global average of nine per 100,000 people, and the continent is home to six of the ten countries with the highest suicide rates in the world.
The situation is attributed, in part, to insufficient action to address and prevent risk factors, including mental health conditions that currently affect 116 million people, compared with 53 million in 1990.
Last August, African health ministers approved a strategy to strengthen mental health care and set several goals to be achieved by 2030, including the development of a policy or legislation on mental health in all countries on the continent.
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