October 10 is World Mental Health Day — an annual acknowledgement by the World Health Organization that mental health is an urgent priority. In 2019, an estimated one in  eight people globally were living with a mental disorder. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, those numbers have become worse. Estimates put the rise in both anxiety and depressive disorders at more than 25% during the first year of the pandemic. At the same time, mental health services have been severely disrupted and the treatment gap for mental health conditions has widened.

The theme for this year’s world mental health day is “making mental health and wellbeing for all a global priority,” a priority strongly endorsed by the Children’s Health Policy Centre. We encourage governments to put adequate funding into public health so that children, in particular, do not bear the brunt of undiagnosed and untreated mental disorders, especially ones that are preventable. For more information on the prevalence of childhood mental disorders in high-income countries, see here.