How to convince politicians that mental health is a priority
How to convince politicians that mental health is a priority
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如何让政客相信心理健康是重中之重
作者：
Rachel Jenkins
政治家，特别是卫生部长，对推动国家政策和战略至关重要，因为他们可以带来政治意愿来影响决策，加快决策，并将决策引向特定方向。因此，重要的是要说服政治家，心理健康应该是一个优先事项。
为了使精神卫生成为真实的优先事项，卫生部长可以做的最有帮助的事情之一是确保精神卫生被很好地纳入各级（社区、初级保健、区、省和国家）的国家卫生部门战略计划。这将使社区和初级保健卫生工作人员更有可能将精神卫生视为其工作的一个组成部分，地区工作人员将把精神卫生视为其支持初级保健以及其他卫生优先事项的重要组成部分，省级工作人员将把支持每个省的地区提供当地精神卫生服务视为优先事项。同样，部长促进卫生部门与其他相关部门（例如，教育、社会福利、刑事司法），以便将心理健康适当地纳入其每一项战略计划（1、2）。
在卫生部门内部，人口健康成果可能更好地侧重于将心理健康纳入一般卫生系统，而不是寻求平行的纵向供资和提供系统（3），因为越来越多的证据表明，其他资金充足的传染病纵向方案往往削弱了卫生系统满足更广泛卫生需求的能力（4）。
Politicians, especially ministers of health, are crucial to drive national policy and strategy, because they can bring political will to bear on decision making, speed up decision making, and steer decisions in a specific direction. Therefore it is important to persuade politicians that mental health should be a priority.
One of the most helpful things a minister of health can do to make mental health a real priority is to ensure that mental health is well integrated into the national health sector strategic plan at each level (community, primary care, district, provincial and national). This will make it much more likely that community based and primary care health staff will see mental health as an integral part of their work, that district staff will see mental health as an essential part of their support responsibilities to primary care alongside other health priorities, and that provincial level staff will see it as a priority to support the districts within each province to deliver local mental health services. Similarly, it is helpful for the minister to facilitate liaison between health and other relevant sectors (e.g., education, social welfare, criminal justice), so that mental health is appropriately integrated with each of their strategic plans (1,2).
Within the health sector itself, it is likely to be better for population health outcomes to focus on integrating mental health into the general health system rather than seeking a parallel vertical funding and delivery system (3), in the light of growing evidence that other well-funded vertical programmes for communicable diseases have often weakened health systems' capacity to address broader health needs (4).