Mental health is a concept that sometimes has not received the necessary attention, and that affects us significantly in our lives. We all live moments of joy, sadness, surprise, or fear, being emotions that we integrate into our daily life. However, for many people, day-to-day life can be a challenge, gripped by fears that escape all logic, thoughts or acts that they cannot control, physical sensations that cause suffering, feelings of apathy, emptiness, or even runaway euphoria or biased conceptions of themselves, others or the world around them. All of this, maintained over time, can severely limit their functioning or even be a risk to their mental or physical integrity.
Anxiety, depression, stress, addictions, phobias, eating issues… are some of the most common mental health problems. These are just a few examples, and you probably don’t have to go very far to find someone who suffers from one of these problems: a partner, parent, brother or sibling, a friend, or even ourselves may be experiencing or developing a mental health issue. Many of these cases are not detected or evaluated properly, and therefore do not receive adequate assistance. With all this in mind, we ask ourselves this question: Why is it necessary to do mental health research? And specifically, why is it necessary to spend time, effort, and resources to develop a mental health detection instrument?
A first response could be found in the fact that mental health is one of the main problems that any public health system has to face. According to a recent United Nations Report, addressing mental health problems has been considered one of the greatest challenges that our society must face in the coming decades (Wang et al., 2007; GBD, 2017), especially after the psychological consequences, still unpredictable, of the global pandemic COVID-19. This challenge is mainly due to the high prevalence, the high economic burden on health systems, and the widespread impact of mental health problems on the population.
Epidemiological studies conducted globally by the World Health Organization (WHO) show a growing prevalence of mental health-related disorders worldwide. A research conducted by the United Nations (Wang et al., 2007; GBD, 2017) estimated that depression affects approximately 264 million people worldwide.
In the United States, between 12% and 47% of its population will develop a mental health disorder during their lifetime (Kessler et al., 2009). Other projections derived from another study, also conducted in the United States, suggest that one in two people, 50% of its population, may develop a mental health disorder during their lifetime (Kessler & Wang, 2008). In Europe, the situation is not much more encouraging since according to a European study from 2010 (Gustavsson et al., 2010) which included thirty countries (European Union plus Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland), and showed that 38.2% of its 514 million inhabitants, approximately 164.8 million, suffer from some type of mental disorder.
Furthermore, according to the WHO, mental disorders are the most common cause of illness in Europe, ahead of cardiovascular diseases and cancer (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2005). The same WHO reports very alarming rates of suicide worldwide, over 800,000 suicides per year, the second leading cause of death among young people aged 15-29 worldwide.
In Spain, the situation is not much better. Numerous studies before the pandemic have indicated high prevalence rates of people with some mental disorder diagnosed throughout their lives. For example, the WHO estimates that 9% of the Spanish population currently suffers from at least one mental disorder, and more than 15% will suffer from it during their lifetime (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2005; MSSSI, 2007). Therefore, based on these data, we could estimate that at least more than 4 million people could have a mental health disorder in Spain, a number that could dramatically increase if we consider those people with subclinical symptoms who do not meet sufficient criteria for a diagnosis.
More recently, the 2017 National Health Survey (ENSE, 2017) estimated that approximately one in ten people aged 15 years or older has reported being diagnosed with a mental health disorder (10.8%). Among these mental disorders, the most commonly diagnosed throughout life were mood disorders (11.4%) and anxiety disorders (9.3%). Major depression is the most frequently diagnosed disorder, with a prevalence of 3.9% per year, and a lifetime prevalence of 10.5%, followed by specific phobias, persistent depressive disorder (previously defined as dysthymia), chronic anxiety, and alcohol use and abuse.
And the children and teenagers?
According to a WHO study, it is estimated that approximately 5-15% of the child population worldwide has psychological disorders that affect the personal, family, social, and school environment (Chan, 2010). Besides, it has been observed that approximately 7-8% of them present significant or severe difficulties in psychosocial or educational functioning. In the case of Spain, it is estimated that between 4% and 6% of children and adolescents have a severe mental disorder (Ministry of Health, Social Services, and Equality, 2014; Ravens-Sieberer et al., 2008). Furthermore, according to the United Nations, half of all mental disorders manifest themselves before the age of 14, and more than 70% of adults with mental disorders began before the age of 18. Apart from these data, there are still many psychosocial, personal, and family problems that, despite not having received a diagnosis, continue to significantly affect the well-being of children, adolescents, and their families, and can act as aggravating factors in any problem related to their mental health.
Therefore, we can conclude that the prevalence rates of mental health-related problems are very alarming, both in adult and child populations. It may be difficult to assume that mental disorders can affect more than a third of the European population, and it is particularly worrying that, in all countries, these problems affect the most disadvantaged groups to a greater extent.
What can we offer from PSICONEXIA? Our small contribution.
Considering the high prevalence of mental health problems, the idea of PSICONEXIA arose, a digital platform that aims to respond to this need, using agile and efficient digital methods to detect and investigate mental health problems through the advantages offered by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
One of the main objectives for developing this digital platform, and specifically, for empirically validating the assessment instrument, Psiconexia Predict, is to be able to detect early on the risk of suffering any psychological disorder or other problem related to mental health in children and adolescents as well as in adults. Early detection of mental health problems is essential for improving treatment outcomes and having better long-term prognosis. To this end, new technologies offer us a unique opportunity to make this assessment tool much more accessible to the entire population through computers, mobile phones, and other devices.
In addition, our evaluation tool has numerous assessment modules aimed at detecting a wide range of mental health problems. Including the most common psychological problems (e.g., depression, anxiety disorders, addictions, etc.) as well as those problems that, despite being highly disabling, are not usually assessed in many psychopathological screening tests (e.g., sexual dysfunction, Tourette’s disorder, neurodevelopmental disorders, conduct disorders, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc.). Finally, and related to the previous point, the PSICONEXIA platform will have an important functionality, which will allow for modifying and adding new content with total autonomy, allowing each professional to personalize and make their evaluation more flexible for each patient. Therefore, our long-term objective is to continue growing, researching, and improving mental health assessment through new modules, which are not included in the first version.
References
- Chan, M. (2010). Mental health and development: targeting people with mental health conditions as a vulnerable group. World Health Organization, 3(1), 111-21.
- Franco, C., & Arango, C., “Prevalencia de Trastornos mentales en niños y adolescentes”, Monografías de Psiquiatría, Vol. XVI, Nº 3, Julio-Septiembre 2004, Págs. 19-27.
- GBD 2017- Disease and Injury Incidence and Prevalence Collaborators (2018). Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The Lancet.
- Gustavsson, A., Svensson, M., Jacobi, F., Allgulander, C., Alonso, J., Beghi, E., … & Gannon, B. (2011). Cost of disorders of the brain in Europe 2010. European neuropsychopharmacology, 21(10), 718-779.
- – Kessler, R. C., Akiskal, H. S., Ames, M., Birnbaum, H., Greenberg, P., . A, R. M., … & Wang, P. S. (2006). Prevalence and effects of mood disorders on work performance in a nationally representative sample of US workers. American journal of psychiatry, 163(9), 1561-1568.
- Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad – MSSSI. (2014). Encuesta Nacional de Salud. España 2011/12. Salud mental y calidad de vida en la población infantil. Serie Informes monográficos no 2. Madrid, España: Autor. Recuperado de http://www.msssi.gob.es/
- MSSSI (2007). Estrategia en Salud Mental del Sistema Nacional de Salud, 2006. Madrid, Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad. https://www.mscbs.gob.es/organizacion/sns/planCalidadSNS/pdf/excelencia/salud_mental/ESTRATEGIA_SALUD_MENTAL_SNS_PAG_WEB.pdf
- MSSSI (2017). Encuesta Nacional de Salud de España 2017. Madrid, Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad.
- Ravens-Sieberer, U., Gosch, A., Rajmil, L., Erhart, M., Bruil, J., Power, M., … & Mazur, J. (2008). The KIDSCREEN-52 quality of life measure for children and adolescents: psychometric results from a cross-cultural survey in 13 European countries. Value in health, 11(4), 645-658.
- Wang et al., (2007). Use of mental health services for anxiety, mood, and substance disorders in 17 countries in the WHO world mental health surveys. The Lancet.
- WHO Regional Office for Europe (2005). Mental health: facing the challenges, building solutions. Copenhaguen, WHO Regional Office for Europe.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.