Melvyn Freeman

The call for the integration of mental health and physical health was advocated by the World Health Organization from the mid-1970s. However, for the most part mental health services continued to be provided vertically with most resources put into treating (or often just warehousing) people with “mental illness” in large psychiatric institutions. Mental health services for people with common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety were pretty much non-existent, especially in LMICs. While there are a number of reasons that mental and physical health integration has grown more recently, one is certainly the mental health crisis that was created by the massive HIV/AIDS pandemic. It became very clear that there was a reciprocal relationship between mental health and HIV. GIP realized the implications of this and got fully involved in public awareness and programmes, mainly in Africa and Eastern Europe. This has contributed substantially to the growth of mental and physical health integration globally.