Indian Law Society, Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy,Pune, Maharashtra,India.
Institute of Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University,Bratislava,Slovak Republica.
Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci. 2018 Oct;27(5):463-467. doi: 10.1017/S2045796018000100. Epub 2018 Mar 9.
Treatment gap refers to the percentage of individuals who require treatment in a country or a defined community but do not receive it due to various reasons. There is widespread acceptance of 'treatment gap' as a measure of unmet needs in mental health. However, the term 'treatment' carries a medical connotation and implies biomedical treatment (or lack of it) of mental illness and is often interpreted by policymakers, planners and researchers, as well as by non-professional stakeholders as exclusively referring to curative clinical psychiatric interventions. This common interpretation results in the exclusion of a range of effective psychosocial interventions available today. Treatment gap also does not include physical health services for persons with mental illness, a major concern due to the relative frequent yet highly unattended physical comorbidity and early mortality of persons with severe mental illness.
METHODS & RESULTS: We, therefore, propose a more comprehensive measure of unmet needs.
治疗差距是指一个国家或特定社区中需要治疗的人群中，由于各种原因未得到治疗的比例。“治疗差距”作为衡量心理健康未满足需求的指标已被广泛接受。然而，“治疗”一词带有医学内涵，暗示对精神疾病进行生物医学治疗（或缺乏治疗），这一术语常常被决策者、规划者和研究人员以及非专业利益相关者解读为专门指的是有疗效的临床精神科干预措施。这种常见的解释导致了一系列有效的心理社会干预措施被排除在外。治疗差距也不包括精神疾病患者的身体健康服务，这是一个主要问题，因为严重精神疾病患者的身体合并症相对频繁，但高度未得到关注，且早期死亡率高。
因此，我们提出了一个更全面的未满足需求衡量标准。
