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Mental Disorders Affect 6% of Total Population in India: Union Health Minister

by Reshma Anand on Dec 9 2015 12:04 PM

Mental Disorders Affect 6% of Total Population in India: Union Health Minister
Mental disorders such as anxiety, depression and schizophrenia are affecting millions of people around the world and India too is not an exception. Union Health Minister, J.P. Nadda has recently expressed his views on the raising cases of mental disorders in India.//
He said about 6% of the total population in India is suffering from either a common or a severe mental disorder such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.

"In 2005, the National Commission on Macroeconomic and Health reported that 10-20 million (1-2 percent of population) suffered from severe mental disorder such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and nearly 50 million (5 percent of the population) from common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety, yielding an overall estimate of 6.5 percent of the population," the Union Minister said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

He added that there were three centrally-run mental health institutes, 40 state-run medical hospitals and 398 departments of psychiatry in various medical colleges across the country to treat patients suffering from mental illnesses, including schizophrenia both in urban and rural areas.

"The government is also implementing the District Mental Health Program (DMHP) in 241 districts in all the 36 states/UTs. Activities under DMHP include school and college counselling services, work place stress management, suicide prevention and community outreach activities," he said.

Source-Medindia


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