mumbai the covid19 pandemic created a buzz around mental health but the budgetary allocation and expenditure for it is barely a fraction of the total health budget even in progressive states such as maharashtra an rti reply from the state public health department showed only 54 of the allocation made under the ncd flexipack an umbrella funding for 15 public health programmes that deal with noncommunicable diseases in the last three financial years was spent on the districtlevel mental health programme the district mental health programme dmhp is the largest public health initiative in india for mental health seeking to integrate mental healthcare with general healthcare india was in 1982 one of the first developing countries to launch a mental health programme right at grassrootsthe state dmhp found rti activist jeetendra ghadge of the young whistleblowers foundation received rs 10631 crore from the centre and rs 5152 crore for the state between 2019 and 2022 unfortunately the health department spent only rs 859 crore or just 54 of the total funds received under the ncd flexipack on the districtlevel mental health programme in these three financial years said ghadgeat a time when mental hospitals are without psychiatrists and there is negligible or no mental healthcare facilities in districts across maharashtra such low expenditure is irresponsible of the government he added maharashtra recorded the highest number of suicides in the country in 2021 accounting for 135 of the 164 lakh suicides in indiadr padmaja jogewar from the state public health department admitted that allocation for district mental health programme is very low we are planning to raise supplementary demands for mental health programmes this year she saidthe lack of priority for mental health begins at the central level while analysing the 202122 union budget the punebased centre for mental health law and policy found only 081 of rs 739318 crore expenditure for the central health ministry was for mental healthof rs 59714 crore allocated for mental health that financial year 93 was for two centrally funded mental health institutions and the rest 7 for national mental health programme nmhp that oversees districtlevel mental health programmehealth economist dr ravi duggal said priority for mental health is low in the national budget as well the total mental health budget works out to less than rs 5000 crore for the entire country and this includes budgets for mental hospitals as well as psychiatry departments in all public hospitals he said