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The power of diagnostics to improve mental health

With World Expo 2025 set to spotlight health, HemoCue’s Lena Wahlhed explains why point-of-care diagnostics must be part of an inclusive, accessible global mental health response — ensuring that no one is left behind.

Despite growing awareness, mental health remains marginalized in global health systems. Around the world, services in this area continue to be significantly underfunded, with substantial shortcomings in both accessibility and quality: As many as 90% of individuals with severe mental health conditions receive no treatment in some countries. Although this is true across the world, the problem is especially aggravated for treatment regimens that require tight monitoring in low-resource and hard-to-reach settings.

“If we truly stand by the principle of leaving no one behind, then access to mental health treatment must extend to everyone, everywhere, regardless of their circumstances,” Lena Wahlhed, Director for Alliance Development at HemoCue, told Devex.

The key to more inclusive mental health treatment may lie with an improvement in diagnostics. “Having access to an easy-to-use blood test using a hemoglobin system can make screening easier and more accessible,” Lena explained.

Portable, point-of-care diagnostic tools (used at or near the site of patient care), like HemoCue’s blood testing technologies, could help health workers better monitor patients and identify at-risk individuals sooner — even in low-resource or custodial settings such as prisons, where diagnosis and treatment are scarce and incidence rates are high. A global meta-analysis found that 1 in 7 people in prison suffers from a severe mental illness, with rates of depression and psychosis significantly more prevalent than in the general population. Without early diagnosis, these conditions can worsen, contributing to self-harm, repeat incarceration, and even suicide.

As countries prepare for World Expo 2025 in Osaka — set to spotlight global health — Wahlhed said it’s time for global health systems to make mental health diagnostics more accessible across all communities.

The original publisher for this article is Devex.

Read the full publication and interview with Lena Wahlhed on Devex website: https://www.devex.com/news/sponsored/the-power-of-diagnostics-to-improve-mental-health-110248


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