Years of war have taken a heavy toll on the people of Afghanistan, and mental illness and addiction now rank as the top health problems facing the country, Reuters reported April 20.

Afghan health officials estimate that two-thirds of their countrymen suffer from depression or another mental illness, and the rate of drug addiction is also rising. "Depressed people like to take drugs and they get more depressed, it's a vicious cycle, this is what we see in Afghanistan," said Faizullah Kakar, the nation's deputy health minister for technical affairs. "Drugs have mixed up with depression and we have an expansion of the number of people who are at risk."

Afghanistan now has more than 920,000 drug addicts, but few trained mental-health workers. "We must train doctors in the basics of mental health so they can go to villages and identify patients with mental problems and help them. This is the most urgent health issue," Kakar said.