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The world health report 2001 - Mental health: new understanding, new hope
Geneva, World Health Organization, 2001. ISBN 92 4 156201 3, ISSN 1020-3311, 178 pages. Price: Sw.fr. 15, Sw.fr. 10. 50 in developing countries.
Fifty years ago, in one of the first and best major WHO reports, the psychiatrist, John Bowlby, deplored the "lack of conviction on the part of governments, social agencies, and the public that mother-love in infancy and childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical health" (Bowlby J, Maternal care and mental health, WHO Monograph Series No 2, 1952: 158). A great deal of attention has since been paid to the centrality for mental health of love, or what Bowlby and his followers call "attachment".
This aspect of mental health does not feature prominently in The world health report for 2001, however. It begins by reiterating the commitment of WHO to health as "not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" but "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being". And it bravely concludes: "For rich and poor alike, mental well-being is as important as physical health". In the intervening pages, though, the report, as its authors admit, "focuses upon mental and behavioural disorders rather than the broader concept of mental health". Adopting this focus, they note that surveys across the world indicate that "during their entire lifetime, more than 250 of individuals develop one or more mental or behavioural disorders". This has accordingly...