The Government of Mexico has spent less than 30 pesos per capita on mental health in the last decade. Don’t you think it’s crazy to allocate such a meager budget to this problem? We are talking about something that affects, at least, 15% of the population. Instead of naming an abstraction called mental health, let’s say clinical depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, post-traumatic stress, addictions…
Myopia? Insensitivity? Meanness? Stinginess? Stupidity? You put the qualifier. The fact is that what happens in Mexico is in tune with what happens in the world. Rich countries allocate $65 per capita budget to mental health. Poor countries, four cents on the dollar, according to the World Health Organization’s 2024 Atlas of Mental Health report.
Mexico’s public budget dedicated to mental health is approximately 40 times greater than that of poor countries and 40 times less than that of rich countries. Mediocre or mediocrity? You choose the words. Mental health spending has been between 1.2 and 1.6% of the total health budget, according to a study by the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research. According to experts, it should be three times higher. Instead of 3,400 million pesos, be closer to 10,000 million pesos.
The low public budget puts pressure on personal or family finances. A personal therapy costs between 450 and 2,500 pesos. They add a similar amount of medications. That’s a lot of money in a country where the average salary is around 600 pesos a day. In practice, the vast majority of people do not receive the attention they require. It is the sad budget, but also the shortage of specialists. The WHO recommends that there be at least one psychiatrist for every 10,000 inhabitants. In Mexico, it is 0.3. When demand exceeds supply… there is unmet demand and, there may be lower quality of care.
How many people need care… how to care for them? There is difficulty in making an accurate count, among other things, due to the size of the underreporting. Were (were we?) many and they multiplied with the pandemic. One of the most eloquent data is in the suicide statistics. According to INEGI, they were 5.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2014. In 2024, it reached 6.8 per 100,000. An increase of 30% in a decade.
How much does mental health cost us… or rather, how much does mental illness cost us? Worldwide, depression and anxiety cost $1 trillion a year, according to the WHO. This is equivalent to 0.9% of world GDP. If it had a similar impact in Mexico, 0.9% of the national GDP, we would be talking about a figure close to 31,000 million pesos annually.
It seems like a lot, but maybe it’s higher. Remember that there is under-registration. In Mexico, three out of every 10 people suffer a major mental health episode in their life and two out of three do not receive care, according to the IMSS.
Experts distinguish between direct and indirect costs. Direct costs are related to spending on medicines and treatments. The indirect ones include other facets, of which the most studied is the impact on activities related to the world of work.
There is a loss of productivity and a reduction in work participation for those suffering from a mental illness or experiencing a crisis. The loss of productivity can be close to 30% and manifests itself in absenteeism or presenteeism (being in the workplace, doing almost nothing).
Mental disorders can make it impossible to participate in the labor market. According to the National Occupation and Employment Survey, there are around 41 million people who are of working age, but do not do so. They are not economically active in Mexico. A year ago there were 1.3 million fewer.
Some of them are dedicated to household chores and others study, but we do not know how many are not in the labor market due to issues related to mental health: depression, anxiety, addictions, autism, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress syndrome.
What do we do? Can we have a budget that is more empathetic to mental health issues…less sick?
