Executive summary
1. At any given time about one person in every ten is suffering
from a mental disorder, and about one in four families has
a member with a mental disorder. Rates of mental disorder
are even higher where there are complex emergencies.
Despite the personal and economic costs and availability of
cost-effective interventions, treatment rates for people with
mental and substance use disorders are low, with treatment
gaps of more than 35–50% of individuals with serious disorders
in developed countries and 76–85% of individuals
with serious disorders in less developed countries. Such
gaps are mainly due to scarcity of human and financial
resources, inequities in their distribution and inefficiencies
in their use, as well as to the stigma associated with mental
disorders