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.

Most aid agencies do not even consider proposals to treat mental health problems; those that do think of it as a minor player, overshadowed by the pressing need to save lives by treating physical illness.

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.

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.

Children have to be provided a nurturing environment to grow. Sadly, in India we don't have a robust mental health programme for children. There is also a lack of accountability in the public system.

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.