Dr Spirit’s story: advocating for equity in global mental health financing

Dr Spirit is the Founder of T2S CARES, an organisation that works towards sustainable access to community-led mental health services for communities around the world. The collaboration between T2S CARES and GMHAN on the issue of mental health financing (how money is collected and used to support mental health services) has helped to unite the sector around a common goal.

A global home

Dr Spirit saw an alignment between T2S CARES’ mission and GMHAN’s commitment to community-rooted leadership, and joined our network. For T2S CARES, GMHAN stood out as a network that “genuinely values the expertise of practitioners working directly with under-served populations”.

“We were seeking a global home for work that bridges mental health advocacy and implementation... GMHAN offers a space where our commitments to equity, sustainability, and lived-experience leadership can translate into collective global action.”

“GMHAN is one of the few global platforms where community-rooted expertise is treated as essential, not symbolic.”

Financing for equity

“Across our international footprint, mental health financing is consistently the greatest structural barrier to equitable mental health systems. Communities with the highest mental health burdens continue to receive the least investment. Funding cycles often reinforce external dependency instead of building local capacity.” Dr Spirit, T2S CARES Founder.

T2S CARES joined GMHAN’s Financing Working Group to connect with like-minded organisations who also fight for equity in mental health financing, and to advocate for a shift to true equity across the world.

“We joined GMHAN’s Finance Working Group to help shift mental health financing to true equity and to ensure community-led models are part of global Universal Health Coverage design.”

Universal Health Coverage aims to guarantee that all people have access to a full range of mental health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial barriers.

The Financing Working Group provides a space for practitioners, policymakers, and funders to discuss what sustainable mental health financing should look like. They focus on low-resource, under-served communities. Dr Spirit and T2S CARES bring to the group lessons from their work across Liberia, the United States, and more than 20 African nations. Their work continues to shape the group’s discussions on financing, policy, and the future of global mental health.

Through the working group, T2S CARES contributed to a co-branded open letter. The letter calls for mental health to be the foundation of Universal Health Coverage approaches. This amplifies the working group’s shared voice, and it also shapes conversations across multiple regions.

Community-led models

In Metro Atlanta, T2S CARES has implemented scalable, community-based interventions that reached nearly 7,000 individuals. These programmes operated at an average cost of approximately $33 per person. This demonstrates that sustainable, community-powered mental health systems can be built with low financial burden and high return on investment.

Building on this experience, T2S CARES is working with Liberia’s Ministry of Health to develop the country’s first proof of concept for Universal Mental Health Coverage. This is a district-level, community-rooted system designed to bring mental health care to every region. Working with GMHAN and its partners helps to build T2S CARES’ credibility with decision-makers in the region. It also creates a powerful unified voice with others in the sector.

T2S CARES’ on-the-ground leadership with Liberia’s Ministry of Health, and its work on the Universal Mental Health Coverage proof of concept, is an inspirational example of country-led, community-led change.

“Our collaboration proves that sustainable global mental health requires shared power - not just shared visibility.”