Mental Health and Recovery Support
The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic recession have negatively affected many people’s mental health and created new barriers for people already suffering from mental illness and substance use disorders. Added to the fear of contracting the virus in a pandemic such as COVID-19 are the significant changes to our daily lives as our movements are restricted in support of efforts to contain and slow down the spread of the virus. Faced with new realities of working from home, temporary unemployment, home-schooling of children, and lack of physical contact with other family members, friends and colleagues, it is important that we look after our mental, as well as our physical, health.
792 million
people live with a mental health disorder of some kind.
14.3%
of deaths
worldwide are attributable to mental disorders.
75% of people
in low- and middle-income countries receive no treatment for mental health disorders.
Mental
Health in Morocco
In 2009, the government published a mental health profile of the country’s general population. The government’s report on mental health in the country used a random sample that it took of the population. Researchers interviewed nearly 5,500 people and over 40% of those interviewed had an active mental disorder. Mental health disorders were more frequent among women, the divorced, unemployed, and those in urban areas. More recent data on Moroccan mental health add credence to these older findings. A 2019 study in the Annals of General Psychiatry outlined that one in five children in Morocco suffered from insomnia, depression, or anxiety. Half of the mental health issues in Morocco’s children started at the age of 14. The Moroccan Ministry of Health published that nearly half of all adolescents it studied suffer from a mental health disorder. Morocco’s adolescents make up nearly 9% of the country’s total population. The minister also emphasized the lack of structure and human capital as Morocco only has 0.67 beds allocated for mental health per 1,000 inhabitants. According to the minister, Morocco has in total only 290 psychiatrists, 5 pedopsychiatrists, and 1,069 nurses trained in psychiatry. education, work productivity, family care and mental health.
