IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0169384.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Donor Financing of Global Mental Health, 1995—2015: An Assessment of Trends, Channels, and Alignment with the Disease Burden

Author

Listed:
  • F J Charlson
  • J Dieleman
  • L Singh
  • H A Whiteford

Abstract

Background: A recent report by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) highlights that mental health receives little attention despite being a major cause of disease burden. This paper extends previous assessments of development assistance for mental health (DAMH) in two significant ways; first by contrasting DAMH against that for other disease categories, and second by benchmarking allocated development assistance against the core disease burden metric (disability-adjusted life year) as estimated by the Global Burden of Disease Studies. Methods: In order to track DAH, IHME collates information from audited financial records, project level data, and budget information from the primary global health channels. The diverse set of data were standardised and put into a single inflation adjusted currency (2015 US dollars) and each dollar disbursed was assigned up to one health focus areas from 1990 through 2015. We tied these health financing estimates to disease burden estimates (DALYs) produced by the Global Burden of Disease 2015 Study to calculated a standardised measure across health focus areas—development assistance for health (in US Dollars) per DALY. Findings: DAMH increased from USD 18 million in 1995 to USD 132 million in 2015, which equates to 0.4% of total DAH in 2015. Over 1990 to 2015, private philanthropy was the most significant source (USD 435 million, 30% of DAMH), while the United States government provided USD 270 million of total DAMH. South and Southeast Asia received the largest proportion of funding for mental health in 2013 (34%). DAMH available per DALY in 2013 ranged from USD 0.27 in East Asia and the Pacific to USD 1.18 in the Middle East and North Africa. HIV/AIDS received the largest ratio of funds to burden—approximately USD150 per DALY in 2013. Mental and substance use disorders and its broader category of non-communicable disease received less than USD1 of DAH per DALY. Interpretation: Combining estimates of disease burden and development assistance for health provides a valuable perspective on DAH resource allocation. The findings from this research point to several patterns of unproportioned distribution of DAH, none more apparent than the low levels of international investment in non-communicable diseases, and in particular, mental health. However, burden of disease estimates are only one input by which DAH should be determined.

Suggested Citation

  • F J Charlson & J Dieleman & L Singh & H A Whiteford, 2017. "Donor Financing of Global Mental Health, 1995—2015: An Assessment of Trends, Channels, and Alignment with the Disease Burden," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0169384
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169384
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169384
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169384&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0169384?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alesina, Alberto & Dollar, David, 2000. "Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 33-63, March.
    2. Barnabas J Gilbert & Vikram Patel & Paul E Farmer & Chunling Lu, 2015. "Assessing Development Assistance for Mental Health in Developing Countries: 2007–2013," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(6), pages 1-10, June.
    3. David E. Bloom & Elizabeth Cafiero & Eva Jané-Llopis & Shafika Abrahams-Gessel & Lakshmi Reddy Bloom & Sana Fathima & Andrea B. Feigl & Tom Gaziano & Ali Hamandi & Mona Mowafi & Danny O’Farrell & Emre, 2012. "The Global Economic Burden of Noncommunicable Diseases," PGDA Working Papers 8712, Program on the Global Demography of Aging.
    4. Barnabas J Gilbert & Vikram Patel & Paul E. Farmer & Chunling Lu, 2015. "Assessing Development Assistance for Mental Health in Developing Countries: 2007–2013," Working Papers id:6987, eSocialSciences.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Parry, Luke & Radel, Claudia & Adamo, Susana B. & Clark, Nigel & Counterman, Miriam & Flores-Yeffal, Nadia & Pons, Diego & Romero-Lankao, Paty & Vargo, Jason, 2019. "The (in)visible health risks of climate change," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    2. Iemmi, Valentina, 2021. "Global collective action in mental health financing: Allocation of development assistance for mental health in 142 countries, 2000–2015," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Iemmi, Valentina, 2021. "Global collective action in mental health financing: Allocation of development assistance for mental health in 142 countries, 2000–2015," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    2. Michael E. Cummings & Alan Gamlen, 2019. "Diaspora engagement institutions and venture investment activity in developing countries," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 2(4), pages 289-313, December.
    3. Yasemin Bal Gunduz & Masyita Crystallin, 2014. "Do IMF-Supported Programs Catalyze Donor Assistance to Low-Income Countries?," IMF Working Papers 2014/202, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Goran Dostic & Zdravko Todorovic & Igor Todorovic, 2013. "International Aid And Principal-Agent Relationship: Evidence From Bosnia And Herzegovina," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 9(1), pages 115-126.
    5. Juliana Yael Milovich, 2018. "Does Aid Reduce Poverty?," OPHI Working Papers ophiwp122.pdf, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    6. Blessing Chiripanhura & Miguel Niño‐Zarazúa, 2015. "Aid, Political Business Cycles and Growth in Africa," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(8), pages 1387-1421, November.
    7. Broich, Tobias, 2017. "Do authoritarian regimes receive more Chinese development finance than democratic ones? Empirical evidence for Africa," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 180-207.
    8. Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati & Yuanxin Li & Samuel Brazys & Alexander Dukalskis, 2019. "Building Bridges or Breaking Bonds? The Belt and Road Initiative and Foreign Aid Competition," Working Papers 201906, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    9. Hur, Yoon Sun & Kim, Milim, 2020. "The Effectiveness of Development Aid to Fragile, conflict, and violence (FCV) Countries: Do Modality and Sector Matter?," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304216, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    10. Balázs Szent-Iványi, 2015. "Are Democratising Countries Rewarded with Higher Levels of Foreign Aid?," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 65(4), pages 593-615, December.
    11. Lauren E. Lopez, 2015. "Corruption And International Aid Allocation: A Complex Dance," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 40(1), pages 35-61, March.
    12. Tilman Brück & Olaf J. de Groot & Guo Xu, 2011. "Does Security Play a Role in European Development Aid Policy?," EUSECON Policy Briefing 11, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    13. Eifert, Benn & Gelb, Alan, 2008. "Reforming Aid: Toward More Predictable, Performance-Based Financing for Development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 2067-2081, October.
    14. Jac C. Heckelman & Stephen Knack, 2008. "Foreign Aid and Market‐Liberalizing Reform," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(299), pages 524-548, August.
    15. Stijn Claessens & Danny Cassimon, 2007. "Empirical evidence on the new international aid architecture," WEF Working Papers 0026, ESRC World Economy and Finance Research Programme, Birkbeck, University of London.
    16. Stéphane Pallage & Michel A. Robe, 2001. "Foreign Aid and the Business Cycle," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(4), pages 641-672, November.
    17. Emmanuelle Auriol & Josepa Miquel-Florensa, 2019. "Taxing fragmented aid to improve aid efficiency," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 453-477, September.
    18. Anke Hoeffler & Patricia Justino, 2024. "Aid and fragile states," Chapters, in: Raj M. Desai & Shantayanan Devarajan & Jennifer L. Tobin (ed.), Handbook of Aid and Development, chapter 14, pages 225-246, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Dreher, Axel & Nunnenkamp, Peter & Thiel, Susann & Thiele, Rainer, 2010. "Aid allocation by German NGOs: Does the degree of public refinancing matter?," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 92, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    20. Ellyn Creasey & Ahmed S. Rahman & Katherine A. Smith, 2012. "Nation Building and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 278-282, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0169384. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.