Global Health · Worldwide
WHO: over a billion people now live with a mental health condition, and most still cannot get care
The Mental Health Atlas 2024 and World Mental Health Today, released together in September 2025, document a worsening gap between need and access.
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The WHO's joint release of the Mental Health Atlas 2024 and World Mental Health Today is the most comprehensive global snapshot of mental health systems published this decade. It draws on data from 144 countries and adds new indicators on telehealth, community-based care, and human-rights compliant services.
The headline numbers are bleak: anxiety and depression remain the most common conditions, suicide kills more than 720,000 people per year, and most low- and middle-income countries spend less than 2% of their health budgets on mental health. Workforce shortages are global; in many regions there is fewer than one mental health worker per 100,000 people.
Read the full release at WHO for country-level data and the policy recommendations it issues to governments and donors.
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