0.4 percent.
That's the proportion of global development assistance that goes to mental illness prevention, care and treatment, according to Daniel Vigo. It's $1.5 billion of the $372 billion total health assistance spending around the world over the last 15 years.
Vigo, a psychologist and psychiatrist at Harvard, believes that more money is needed. And he also believes that one reason the percentage is so low is that the world doesn't do a good job of assessing the number of people who suffer from mental illness and the disability and the premature death that result.
Those lost years — years when a person can't work, can't take part in family life — and those earlier-than-expected deaths are what's called the "global burden of mental illness."
[For more of this story, written by Joanne Silberner, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/go...ll-of-mental-illness]
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