Social Entrepreneurship and Systems Thinking about Mental Illness in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages in accordance with UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) cannot be accomplished without close attention being paid to threats to mental health leading to mental illness or addiction. This is a globally relevant point, given the high burden of mental illness, ¹ and investments in mental health-related care and prevention that are badly out of proportion to that burden. ² This is a challenge pertinent to most countries, as there is an under-resourcing in high income contexts also. ³ However, in low-and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) this disparity is compounded both with respect to investment, and insufficiencies in broader infrastructure. ⁴