A recent study by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur highlighted concerning trends regarding the reporting of mental disorders in India. The findings revealed that self-reporting rates for mental health problems were notably low.
The study revealed that the self-reporting of mental illness was less than 1% based on the 75th Round National Sample Survey, 2017-18. The National Sample Survey completely relied on the self-reporting of the individuals. The data was collected from 5,55,115 individuals (rural: 3,25,232; urban: 2,29,232), from randomly selected 8,077 villages and 6,181 urban areas, including 283 outpatient and 374 hospitalisation cases due to mental disorders in India.
Additionally, the study shed light on the significant out-of-pocket expenses incurred by individuals seeking mental health services, largely due to reliance on the private sector. The study was done based on the logistic regression models and it shows that the individuals with higher incomes were 1.73 times more inclined to report health problems compared to those with lower incomes.
The study has been published in the International Journal of Mental Health Systems and has been co-authored by Dr Alok Ranjan, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts (SoLA), IIT Jodhpur and Dr Jewel Crasta, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA.
