Background. Individuals often avoid or delay seeking professional help for mental health problems. Stigma may be a key deterrent to help-seeking but this has not been reviewed systematically. Our systematic review addressed the overarching question: What is the impact of mental health-related stigma on help-seeking for mental health problems? Subquestions were: (a) What is the size and direction of any association between stigma and help-seeking? (b) To what extent is stigma identified as a barrier to help-seeking? (c) What processes underlie the relationship between stigma and help-seeking? (d) Are there population groups for which stigma disproportionately deters help-seeking?Method. Five electronic databases were searched from 1980 to 2011 and references of reviews checked. A meta-synthesis of quantitative and qualitative studies, comprising three parallel narrative syntheses and subgroup analyses, was conducted.Results. The review identified 144 studies with 90 189 participants meeting inclusion criteria. The median association between stigma and help-seeking was d = − 0.27, with internalized and treatment stigma being most often associated with reduced help-seeking. Stigma was the fourth highest ranked barrier to help-seeking, with disclosure concerns the most commonly reported stigma barrier. A detailed conceptual model was derived that describes the processes contributing to, and counteracting, the deterrent effect of stigma on help-seeking. Ethnic minorities, youth, men and those in military and health professions were disproportionately deterred by stigma.Conclusions. Stigma has a small-to moderate-sized negative effect on help-seeking. Review findings can be used to help inform the design of interventions to increase help-seeking.

The Commission gratefully acknowledges the contribution of data on psychotherapies from Pim Cuijpers, the Global Burden of Disease from Harvey Whiteford, and inputs received from William Eaton on some of the content. We also acknowledge the role of the Lancet editors (Niall Boyce and Helen Frankish) who provided important feedback through the process of developing the Commission. Research administration of the Commission was coordinated by Deepti Beri (Public Health Foundation of India and Sangath).We acknowledge the role of research team members of the working groups who provided assistance with literature searches, drafting and data extraction and helping prepare figures, namely

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We argue that the global burden of mental illness is underestimated and examine the reasons for under-estimation to identify five main causes: overlap between psychiatric and neurological disorders; the grouping of suicide and self-harm as a separate category; conflation of all chronic pain syndromes with musculoskeletal disorders; exclusion of personality disorders from disease burden calculations; and inadequate consideration of the contribution of severe mental illness to mortality from associated causes. Using published data, we estimate the disease burden for mental illness to show that the global burden of mental illness accounts for 32·4% of years lived with disability (YLDs) and 13·0% of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), instead of the earlier estimates suggesting 21·2% of YLDs and 7·1% of DALYs. Currently used approaches underestimate the burden of mental illness by more than a third. Our estimates place mental illness a distant first in global burden of disease in terms of YLDs, and level with cardiovascular and circulatory diseases in terms of DALYs. The unacceptable apathy of governments and funders of global health must be overcome to mitigate the human, social, and economic costs of mental illness.

Executive SummaryThe poor physical health of people with mental illness is a multi-faceted, transdiagnostic, and global problem. Physical health disparities are observed across the entire spectrum of mental illnesses, in low, middle-and high-income countries. This stems from both a heightened risk of physical diseases in people with mental illness, along with their reduced access to adequate healthcare. The high rates of physical comorbidities (and typically-poor clinical management of this) drastically reduces life expectancy, and also increases the personal, social and economic burden of illness across the lifespan.This Commission has brought together an international team of researchers, clinicians, and key stakeholders from various backgrounds and professionally / personally-relevant experience, in order to summarize advances in understanding on this topic, and present clear directions for health promotion, clinical care and future research. The breadth and multifactorial nature of physical health disparities across the range of mental health diagnoses poses an almost limitless number of potential considerations. Therefore, rather than attempting to cover all of the different possible combinations of physical-mental comorbidities individually, the aim of this Commission was to: (i) establish highlypertinent aspects of physical health-related morbidity and mortality which apply transdiagnostically, (ii) highlight the common modifiable factors driving these disparities, (iii) present actions and initiatives for health policy and clinical services to address these issues, and (iv) identify promising areas for future research towards discovering novel solutions. This was addressed across 5 different Parts of the Commission: Parts 1 and 2 determined the scope, priorities and key targets for physical health improvement across multiple mental illnesses. Parts 3, 4 and 5 discussed emerging strategies and produced recommendations for improving physical health outcomes in people with mental illness. Leaders and contributors for each Part are shown in the Appendix (pg.1) . Part 1: 'Its more than premature mortality'Part 1 identified almost 100 systematic reviews/meta-analyses examining the prevalence of physical comorbidities in mental illness. Around 70% of the meta-research focused on cardiometabolic diseases; consistently reporting that mental illnesses were associated with 1.4-to 2-fold increased risk for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases compared to the general population. Although mostly studied in 'severe mental illness' ('SMI', and particularly psychotic disorders), the prevalence of cardiometabolic diseases was similarly elevated across a broad range of other diagnoses, including substance use disorders (SUDs), and 'common mental disorders' ('CMDs', such as depression and anxiety). Part 2: Key modifiable factors in health behaviours and health servicesPart 2 built on the findings of Part 1 with a hierarchal evidence synthesis of modifiable risk factors for physical diseases in mental illness. The bu...

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The study suggests that the CAN is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing the needs of people with severe mental illness. It is easily learnt by staff from a range of professional backgrounds, and a complete assessment took, on average, around 25 minutes.