Why Mental Health Does Mental Illnesse?

INTRODUCTION

Talk about the chapters in brief.

1.1 MENTAL HEALTH - DOES IT ENTAIL MORE?

Mental health is not just an absence of mental illness. It includes how people cope with their lives and how interactions take place through each individual’s ability to think, act and feel. This means that each person has a unique set of experiences that determines the stability of their mental health status. Due to its singular nature, it has become a major public health concern.

WHO formally defines mental illnesses as ‘suffering, disability or morbidity due to mental, neurological and substance use disorders, which can arise due to the genetic, biological and psychological make-up of individuals as well as adverse social conditions and environmental

This requires not only more investment for proper research and development but also an extensive time period which brings in more opportunity costs. Here, opportunity costs could be the time given up to conduct a trial for a certain medication which could have been spent on fulfilling another purpose. Because of all the complexities involved in promoting and tackling mental health, it becomes costly. In UK, it costs £105 billion and more each year but the government budget for investment on mental health does not amount up to it. This has led to overstretched mental health services with long waiting times and even lack of dedicated amenities. Ony 5.5%(£115 million) of UK’s health research spending is spent on mental health

This marks the need to look into alternatives and the good news is- rapid innovation. Trends in treatment of mental illnesses show an increasing inclusion of people’s need and situation especially through the use of digital technology. This may be of no surprise to most people as advancements in technology has simplified lives. However, to formally establish it as an alternative treatment option has created lots of questions that remain necessary to answer. To delve more into it, these digital technologies have effectively combined clinical practice and therapies into a digital form and are popularly called digital mental health interventions (DMHIs). It aims to prevent and improves mental health problems through use of software programmes which can be accessed via computers, tablets, smartphones, gaming consoles, robots, virtual reality equipment and other devices by paying attention to developmental, emotional, behavioural and psycho-somatic aspects of these problems. Some of the popular DMHIs used are Beating the Blues, Fear-Fighter, Cope and BT-Steps for depression/anxiety, phobia, and