ABSTRACT
The acknowledgement of mental health as a component of sustainable development is a victory for scientists who have worked tirelessly for decades to generate the evidence demonstrating the enormous individual and societal consequences of mental health problems, and the existence of affordable and effective interventions for them. The pervasive discrimination against persons with mental health problems plays itself out in myriad ways across sectors in society, starting from the disgracefully low levels of public spending on mental health. Mental health problems are leading causes of sickness and death in this demographic group. Mental health problems clearly are damaging to youth capabilities, defined by Nobel-Laureate Amartya Sen as an individual’s ability ‘to achieve functioning that he or she has reason to value’. It would not be an overstatement to say that there is no sustainable development without mental health, just as there is no health without mental health.
