When thinking of essential, need-based services for third world countries, the average person would most likely list one of the following: Food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. While these are all undoubtedly essential requirements for maintaining and ensuring quality of life, there is one essential service that is often left out of the equation: Mental health.

The importance of access to proper mental health care is not nearly as stressed upon as it should be, especially considering its dire consequences. Untreated mental illnesses and disorders have been shown to result in a plethora of difficulties. There is a reduction in the average lifespan by up to 25 years, a 35% decrease in productivity, a multi-digit increase in violence, drug use, and criminal activity, etc. To make matters worse, poverty has also been shown to significantly increase the likelihood of developing mental problems, as well as increasing the severity of the negative effects of mental disorders stated above. Since Africa is registered as a third world developing country, there is an intrinsic struggle to attain an adequate amount of most essential services, including these. But this specific dilemma becomes uniquely cyclical when you factor in the fact that mental problems can cause negative environments while negative environments can also cause mental problems.

Unfortunately, despite the demand for mental health services being excessively high, the supply for this demand is also excessively low. In Africa, the implementation of mental health policies, the availability of cognitive professionals, and the rate of treatment for mental illnesses and disorders are all several times below the global average. A large part of this lack of deference toward psychological care can be attributed to a simultaneous lack of research on the topic. A survey done by BMC Psychiatry found that only around 3% of clinical trials conducted in third world countries were about the topic of mental health. Without an adequate range of knowledge surrounding the need for psychological care, the issue is and will continue to be overlooked.

In recent years, however, there has been a slight yet hopeful uptick in the number of outreach services being performed and examined in African nations. With the importance of mental health (and the detrimental effects of not providing it) being thoroughly documented, we can be cautiously optimistic that this upward trend toward mental health will continue and eventually lead to the betterment of mental health in Africa as a whole.