The Lancet

An 81-year-old man was referred to our clinic with a 1-year history of shortness of breath on exertion. The patient also had a history of cryptogenic liver cirrhosis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

World Mental Health Day (WMHD), which began in 1992, is focused on “Mental Health in an Unequal World” in 2021, encompassing issues of poverty and disparities due to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The theme underlines a need to address stigma and discrimination and human rights violations in the mental health sector and inadequate quality mental health services worldwide.

The theme of the 2021 World Mental Health Day is “Mental Health in an Unequal World”, highlighting unequal access to mental health care across the world. This situation has been further worsened by governmental and public responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The response of many high-income countries (HICs) and institutions to the pandemic has been the reverse of equity, exemplified by inequitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and widening inequities in wealth.1 A crucial consideration in this context is the imbalance in social and economic factors that shape onset and outcomes of mental health across communities and countries.