Philippine Mental Health Act: Just an Act? A Call to Look Into the Bi-directionality of Mental Health and Economy

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Nicholle Mae Amor Tan Maravilla¹  Myles Joshua Toledo Tan² 

[1] College of Medicine, Cebu Doctors' University;Department of Natural Sciences, University of St. La Salle;Department of Chemical Engineering, University of St. La Salle

关键词: Philippines;    mental health act;    mental health;    happiness and well-being;    Northwestern Europe;    mental health economics;    economy;    psychology;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.706483

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

It may seem intuitive to say that a healthy economy makes people happy, but little is said aboutthe converse of this statement. Perhaps, we should look into how happy people make an economyhealthy. The nature of happiness has been debated on by philosophers for thousands of years, buta benchmark for it that has been accepted by many social and behavioral scientists in the past fewdecades has been Diener’s Subjective Well-being (SWB) (Diener, 2009). Studies that employ theuse of SWB show that individuals who report high levels of it tend to live longer with healthierlives, have healthier social relationships, and work more productively (Montagnoli, 2019). Hence,higher levels of SWB could mean good mental health among individuals. Poli et al. (2020) describedgood mental health as “a state of well-being that allows individuals to cope with the normalstresses of life and function productively.” However, the definition of good mental health may varyamong cultures, values and traditions. Culture affects how people manifest symptoms, express thesesymptoms, deal with psychological problems, and decide whether to seek care (Eshun and Gurung,2009). Because of these differences, the best way to enrich our understanding of mental healthmight be to evaluate the different perspectives of mentally healthy populations toward it (Vaillant,2003). Further understanding of mental health is significant because it greatly affects the economyas economies appear to crucially depend on the population’s mental health. And so, good mentalhealth is significant for economic growth. According to Knapp and Wong (2020), the economy hasa bi-directional relationship with mental health. Economic decline may lead to a greater likelihoodof mental-illness due to exposure to risk factors such as social exclusion, poor education, treatmentcosts, unemployment, and poverty. Mental health problems may also lead to a significant decline ineconomic activity that results from productivity losses and limited resources for treatment. Thus,the study of economics, particularly mental health economics (MHE), is significant in identifyingways to improve mental health and mental healthcare production and consumption. Unfortunately,to the best of our knowledge and understanding, there are currently no existing studies written onPhilippine MHE. And so to help address the economic and mental health crises in the Philippines,we hope to spark discussions that will promote the study of MHE for the good of all Filipinos.

【 授权许可】

CC BY