A/HRC/29/33 79. It is estimated that the burden of mental-health problems and mental disabilities constitutes 14 per cent of general burden of disease.4 However, compared with physical health, mental health is given inadequately low priority and insufficient human and financial resources. 80. The end of twentieth century brought two main messages to the international community. The first message was about the centrality of mental health in the modern health policies, based on the high burden of mental-health problems and mental disorders. The second message was that, contrary to the previous understanding, effective measures are possible if outdated traditions are abandoned and the modern public health approach is applied. In the twenty-first century there is no place for psychiatric institutions based on stigma and segregation, and there is a need, in words of G.H. Brundtland “to ensure that ours will be the last generation that allows shame and stigma to rule over science and reason”.5 81. However, after more than a decade since the publication of the landmark World Health Report 2001, mental health remains hostage to outdated attitudes and inadequate services. Studies show that, in many instances, there is either no access to mental health services at all, or those services are stigmatizing and violate human rights.6 82. One of the significant obstacles to the implementation of modern public mentalhealth principles is a lack of political will, including on global health agenda, to recognize the centrality of mental health in the full realization of the right to health and to implement the principle of parity between physical and mental health. The Special Rapporteur is concerned that, despite clear evidence of the increasingly heavy burden of mental ill-health, many important stakeholders continue to marginalize this field of health. 83. Mental health deserves much more attention and must be effectively mainstreamed within the Sustainable Development Goals through the goals and benchmarks related to health and sustainable development. The high number of suicides and suicide attempts are an indicator that the mental health of individuals and population needs to be addressed very seriously.7 Concerted and effective measures need to be applied to substantively address this challenge and reduce the numbers of suicides, which have in many countries reached epidemic rates. The Special Rapporteur will further analyse the relevance of human rights in addressing suicide and other mental health issues as a public health challenge. 84. In some regions, resources allocated to mental health care are used ineffectively and predominantly for maintaining large segregated psychiatric long-term care institutions and separate psychiatric hospitals. In such institutions, psychotropic medications are too often overprescribed, including as a measure of chemical restraint or even as a punishment. That is an example of an imbalance: when resources are used for biomedical interventions and institutionalization and not for the development of psychosocial interventions through community-based services meeting more closely the individual needs of people. Such imbalances feed ineffective systems, reinforce stigma and social exclusion and lead to systemic violations of human rights, sometimes amounting to torture or ill-treatment. 4 5 6 7 14 WHO estimates available from www.who.int/mental_health/mhgap/en/. World Health Report 2001: Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope (Geneva, Switzerland, 2001), p. x. Saraceno B., van Ommeren, M., Batniji, R., Cohen, A., Gureje, O., Mahoney, J., Sridhar, D., Chris Underhill, Ch., “Barriers to improvement of mental health services in low-income and middle-income countries”, The Lancet, vol. 370 (2007), pp. 1164–1174. See WHO, “Preventing suicide — a global imperative” (2014).