Budget 2022: Big Thumbs Up For Addressing Mental Health, Huge Let Down In Health Allocation

In her budget speech, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman pointed out that the pandemic has accentuated mental health problems of people of all ages and announced a plan to set up a National Tele Mental Health program in the country and said 23 tele-mental health centres will be launched with the NIMHANS as the nodal centre.

This is being hailed as a major step in addressing India's growing mental health crisis.

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National Mental Health Survey 2016 found that close to 14% of India¡¯s population required active mental health interventions.

Every year, about 2,00,000 Indians take their lives. Roughly 56 million Indians suffer from depression, and 38 million suffer from some anxiety disorder.

It has only worsened in the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

What experts said

"In fact, even before the COVID pandemic, we knew the prevalence of mental health disorders in our community because NIMHANS had carried out a survey on mental health problems and we know that about 10.2 per cent of the population has a diagnosable mental or substance use disorder," Director of Bengaluru's National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Dr Pratima Murthy said.

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Explaining the Tele mental healthcare process to deliver basic mental healthcare counselling, Dr. Murthy said that the people will have trained counsellors who can take the first level of calls related to mental distress.

"Tele mental health is a very important step because you will have trained counsellors. They are not mental health specialists, but trained counsellors who can take the first level of calls related to mental distress. They will be under the supervision of the centres of excellence, which has mental health specialists to deliver some basic mental health care counselling to identify people who have severe forms or when acute forms of mental illness need emergency care or in-person consultation and refer them to institutions. So that, timely help can be provided for people who need it in terms of referral," she said.

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However, the same cheer is not there when it comes to the overall budgetary allocation for the health sector.

Health sector allocation

The health sector has been allocated Rs 86200.65 crore in the Union Budget, a hike of 16 percent over Rs 73,931 crore in 2021-22.

Out of Rs 86200.65 crore, Rs 83,000 crore have been allocated to the Department of Health and Family Welfare while Rs 3200 crore have been allocated to the Department of Health Research.

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¡°The World Inequality Report 2022 brought out by the World Inequality Lab points out that India is among the most unequal countries in the world. The top 10% hold 57% of total national income and the bottom 50% merely 13% of total national income. According to the report, India stands out as a poor and very unequal country, with an affluent elite,¡± Poonam Muttreja, the executive director of Population Foundation of India, said. ¡°Clearly, India can be proud of its growth performance, but that is it. This budget could have done much more to bridge the widening gap between the rich and poor in the country.¡±

"If you look at the budget, there is a very little mention of health care in the budget, it occupies very little attention. Skilling is getting intensified which is good because we need a lot of skilled manpower to assist with the healthcare delivery system," Dr Naresh Trehan, Chairman and Managing Director of Medanta hospital said.

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"Finance Minister mentioned that we have a robust health system since we survived the pandemic. It has become strong and all that is true, but the question is that is it future-ready?

"What is required? a robust infrastructure is required. It needs to be advanced and it needs to be renewed. We need high care tertiary hospitals to deal with pandemics like these. At some level, the smaller hospitals can handle the caseload. But you saw what happened in the second wave. The point is that we need to be able to advance the metro hospitals. We need financing at the national level. We need to expand new technologies and research," he stated.

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