GENEVA—The global economic crisis is likely to cause an upsurge in suicides and mental illness as people struggle to cope with losing their homes or livelihoods, the World Health Organization warned Thursday.

"We should not be surprised or underestimate the turbulence and the likely consequences of the financial crisis," WHO Director General Margaret Chan told a meeting of mental health care professionals in Geneva.

"It should not come as a surprise if we continue to see more stresses, more suicides and more mental disorders," she said.

Just this week, a 45-year-old business school graduate in Los Angeles shot dead five members of his family before killing himself, telling police in a suicide letter that he had been driven to the deed because of his dire economic situation.

The Los Angeles case came less than a week after a 90-year-old woman in the US state of Ohio shot herself as she was about to be served an eviction notice on the home she has lived in for the past 38 years.

However Chan stressed that the majority of people worldwide suffering from mental illness live in low- and middle-income countries, where there is an "abysmal lack of care," inadequate mental health care budgets and where victims suffer from social stigma and discrimination.

Chan was speaking at the launch of the WHO's Mental Health Gap Action Program which aims to redress the balance.

The WHO estimates that three quarters of the global burden of neuropsychiatric disorders falls in low -and middle- income countries, and that in these countries, around three quarters of affected people cannot afford treatment.

"Care for these highly prevalent, persistent, and debilitating disorders is not a charity. It is a moral and ethical duty," Chan said.