Bravo to the Science Times today for their important story on mental health clinics in Goa, India. Depression and anxiety have long been considered Western illnesses, the illness of wealthy people, an urban illness.

The new clinics that are being set up in the town of Siolim have the potential to change how mental illness gets treated in the developing world. If concepts such as “depression” or “anxiety” don’t exist in the lexicon of a community, then society believes they don’t exist as ailments in people. But if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, it will still make a noise.

In India, the stigma of mental illness remains strong. To minimize the problem, health workers avoid using the words “mental illness,” “depression” or “anxiety” with patients, relying on more commonly used words like “strain” and “tension.”

Moreover, the model uses social workers (trained for a week to a few months) instead of just doctors to screen patients,. This is a more economical approach to bring mental health care to a larger group of people in a less developed place.