Vikram Patel

India remains one of the few nations which still focuses entirely on an archaic de-addiction model, administered by the ministry of social justice and empowerment, to address drinking problems, adhering to a centuries-old idea of these problems being a moral disorder rather than a health condition.

The current approach that psychiatry takes almost ignores social worlds in which mental health problems arise and tries to become highly biomedical like other branches of medicine such as cardiology or oncology. But psychiatry has to be far more embedded in people's personal and social worlds.

Mental health can improve overall well-being and prevent other illnesses. And since mental health problems have a serious economic impact on vulnerable communities, making them a priority can save lives and markedly improve people's quality of life.

The difference in the quality of medical care received by people with mental illness is one of the reasons why they live shorter lives than people without mental illness. Even in the best-resourced countries in the world, this life expectancy gap is as much as 20 years. In the developing countries of the world, this gap is even larger.

I used to be one of the lead actors of a theatre group called Hetu when I was in medical school. Prithvi Theatre was our stomping ground. I'd got many positive reviews.

Those who believe that health is a commodity, on par with cars or computers, fail to grasp the basic economic lesson that health is very vulnerable to exposure to the markets, not least due to the profound asymmetries in power between the providers and consumers.

There is no health without mental health; mental health is too important to be left to the professionals alone, and mental health is everyone's business.