mHealth and global mental health: still waiting for the mH2 wedding?

Table 3 Mental health DALYs, mobile phone subscriptions, and growth in mobile phone subscriptions by United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG) groups

UNMDG groups	Total mental health DALYs 2004*	Total mobile phone subscriptions 2012 (millions)**	Average growth in mobile phone subscriptions 2008–2012 (%) ***
Developed Regions	40 715	1 522.33	10.15
All regions other than Developed Regions	159 730.85	4 735.94	46.29^****
Northern Africa	4 334	195.94	36.64
Sub-Saharan Africa	20 849	537.83	53.89
Latin America and the Caribbean	20 926	657.7	27.64
Caucasus and Central Asia	2 403	84.43	48.18
Eastern Asia	39 196	1 158.7	34.81
Southern Asia	50 200	1 196.03	75.07
South-eastern Asia	15 998	684.62	49.35
Western Asia	5 603	216.56	41.3
Oceania	221.85	4.13	49.7

*2004 figures from WHO[4].
**2012 figures from World Bank, which defines mobile phone subscriptions as follows: ‘subscriptions to a public mobile telephone service using cellular technology, which provide access to the public switched telephone network. Post-paid and prepaid subscriptions are included[21]’.
***Average of growth of mobile subscriptions in constituent countries in each grouping; not weighted by population. See Additional file1 for statistics for mental health DALYs and mobile subscriptions (2008–2012) by UNMDG group and individual country (figures from WHO and World Bank[4, 21]).
****Average of growth across non-developed region UNMDG groups; not weighted by population size or number of constituent countries in each group.

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