The World Health Organisation’s World Mental Health Day passed quietly on Monday, not rating nearly as many column centimetres as a royal wedding or Paris Hilton’s latest escapade.

WHO reckons some 450 million people worldwide suffer from a mental disorder. What’s more surprising is that so many people are mentally resilient, especially when you consider the top three profitable ‘industries’ on the planet are armaments, drugs and child trafficking. And that’s not to mention the epidemic of child abuse in the home, even in ‘advanced’ countries such as Australia.

If you’ve grown up not at least slightly mentally unhinged, then you’ve been lucky enough to have a good family life and an absence of some of the peculiar chemicals which can mess with the brain.

And yet there is still often a stigma attached to being mentally unwell, even when our family or friends or indeed ourselves can suffer anything from mild depression to schizophrenia. At least in Australia there are outreach services and you can call Lifeline 13 11 14 when the blues hit.

‘Investing in mental health’ is the theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day. Congratulations to the Australian government for putting $2.2 billion in this year’s Budget towards mental health resources, including $154 million to community organisations to employ 425 extra personal helpers and mentors – it’s the one-on-one help that counts.

Australia also has its first mental health minister in Mark Butler; it may indicate a more serious attitude to the impact of mental disorder on social life and business.

The most recent National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing found that in the previous 12 months one in five, or almost 3.2 million, Australians aged 16–85 years experienced mental disorders but, as Mr Butler pointed out, ‘in the same year only one-third of people with a mental disorder used mental health services’.

That’s down to stigma associated with mental disorders and also the failure of individuals to recognise the symptoms.

And would it be in the category of the bleeding obvious to point out to WHO (ever will listen) that investing in mental health also requires treatment for the causes of the three major industries mentioned above?

This would include looking at why the near kin to chimpanzees feast so readily on violence and despair, and at how hope and love can be maintained in the family, whatever its variation.

It’s a serious, hard look into the darkness of humanity, but we have to get beyond the ‘monkeys with guns’ worldview if we are to survive.