9.1.4  Mental health and poverty (Millennium Development Goal 1)

Poverty and mental illness are closely linked. The stresses of poverty can lead to mental illness, and mental illness can make a person poorer (see Figure 9.6). When a person is affected by a severe mental illness, they are more likely to be jobless and may not be able to do their work properly, e.g. plough the fields, sell things in the market. The person with mental illness, and their family, may suffer terrible economic hardship.

Figure 9.6  The poverty cycle.