Mental Health in Indonesia

About this report

This report looks at mental health in Indonesia from two sides. The first describes how mental disorders are actually served by the National Health Insurance scheme (JKN): who reaches care, what they are treated for, where, and at what cost. The second asks whether the health system has the workforce, facilities, and medicines to respond at all.

Reading the two together gives a fuller picture than either alone. The claims side shows demand that the system already meets and recognises; the system side shows the capacity that limits how much demand can ever be met. Both rely on what is recorded in administrative systems, so they describe the population that is served, not the true level of mental illness in the community, which is much higher because most people never reach a facility.

Questions this report answers

• How many people with a mental disorder are served by JKN, and what conditions dominate the served burden?
• Where is mental health care delivered, how concentrated is its cost, and how unequal is access across regions?
• Does Indonesia have enough psychiatrists, mental health staff, and facilities, and how unevenly are they spread?
• What does the gap between served demand and available capacity mean for policy?

Key findings

• In 2024 about 679,000 people served by JKN had a schizophrenia or psychotic disorder, the single largest served group, ahead of anxiety and stress related conditions (about 362,000) and developmental and childhood conditions.
• The served burden is rising steadily and is heavily concentrated in Java. Severe, long-term illness such as schizophrenia drives repeated contact, while early detection of common conditions such as depression remains limited.
• Hospital mental health spending is highly concentrated: the most expensive 10 percent of patients account for well over half of all hospital spending, and physical illness alongside mental illness adds substantially to total cost.
• The system side is severely constrained: Indonesia has only 0.51 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, against a World Health Organization benchmark of about 1, and 38 percent of districts (196 of 514) have no psychiatrist at all.
• There are only 42 mental hospitals nationally, 7 provinces have none, and just 27 percent of general and specialty hospitals (895 of 3,275) offer adult mental health services, leaving care reliant on a thin, referral-heavy model concentrated in large cities.
• Clinical psychologists (0.85 per 100,000) and mental health nurses (1.74 per 100,000) are likewise far below international norms and concentrated in Java, so served demand and available capacity are both unequal in the same places.

Choose an analysis

This report has two parts. Start with whichever question matters most to you.