Submission by the GMHAN Child & Youth Working Group to OHCHR’s call for inputs on the impact of mental health challenges on the enjoyment of human rights by young people
Context: In February 2026, the Office of the High Commissioner’s For Human Rights, called for inputs to study the impact of mental health challenges on the enjoyment of human rights by young people. This will be presented at the 63rd session of the Human Rights Council in September 2026.
Human Rights Council resolution 57/30 on youth and human rights requests the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct a detailed study on the impact of mental health challenges on the enjoyment of human rights by young people, to be presented to the Council at its sixty-third session. It also requests that the report be carried out in consultation with States and relevant stakeholders, including relevant United Nations agencies, the United Nations Youth Office and the Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs, the treaty bodies, the special procedures of the Human Rights Council, national human rights institutions, civil society and representatives of youth organizations.
Submission by GMHAN’s Child & Youth Working Group
With over 1,400 members from 70 countries, our Working Group was established to centre the lived experiences of young people, advance youth leadership and advocacy, and promote the meaningful integration of young people’s needs and human rights within mental health globally. The group is co-chaired by young leaders Muskan Lamba (India), Zane Muwanguzi (Uganda), and Murilo Slomka (Brazil), who coordinated responses from the members. Below are the key factors we consider essential for inclusion in the report.
I. Mental health challenges faced by young people
Prevalence & onset: More than 1 in 7 adolescents live with a diagnosed mental health condition; ~50% of these conditions begin before age 18 (nearly two-thirds by age 25), leading to preventable long-term life-course impacts.
Suicide: ~45,800 adolescents die by suicide each year and it remains the third leading cause of death among people aged 15-29; with rates rising in most regions globally.
Young people experience crises earlier and for longer durations than other age groups, impacting rights to health, education, social connection, emotional stability, development, participation, and care, and limiting one's full potential.
Demographic and economic shift: Over the next decade, global demographic change and the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history will place young people at the centre of social, economic, governmental, and civic systems. Yet investment in youth mental health lags far behind need across prevention, care, promotion, and research.
Violence and conflict: Ongoing exposure to violence, within families, peer groups, communities, and contexts of armed conflict, ethnic cleansing, war, and mass atrocities, perpetuates cycles of harm and widespread trauma for many communities.
In places such as Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, DR Congo, and Gaza, repeated exposure to violence and chronic conflict is causing intergenerational mental health crises.
These burdens are unequal as they are gendered, intersectional, age-specific, socio-economic, historically rooted, and structurally produced.
Structural drivers: Poverty, violence, discrimination, unsafe digital environments, stigma, climate change, substance use, systemic underinvestment, displacement, political and economic instability, and harmful practices by alcohol, tobacco, gambling, unhealthy food, and social media industries are all core contributors to mental health challenges, beyond individual pathology and require cross-sectoral, rights-based responses beyond biomedical models.
II. Impact of mental health challenges on the enjoyment of human rights
Prevention as a rights obligation: Failure to invest in early, integrated prevention constitutes a systemic denial of care and a human rights violation, as it reinforces intergenerational cycles of inequality and disadvantage.
Mental health systems in many countries remain institution-centred. Although up to 75% of primary care visits involve mental health, 66% of government financing goes to psychiatric institutions, where rights violations of children and young people like coercion, abuse, involuntary detention and inhumane treatment are common.
Marginalisation: Indigenous youth, LGBTQI+ youth, youth with psychosocial disabilities, and young people in low-resource and humanitarian settings face intersecting and discriminatory systems of exclusion and vulnerability.
Policy gap: As of 2020, only 53% of countries had a national child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) policy or strategy, with inconsistent progress on updating and implementation.
Community-based care: Countries must shift from institutional models to primary and community-based, rights-based, recovery-oriented, person-centred, and inclusive services. Learning from examples within queer communities, youth collectives, disabled people’s movements, and other historically marginalized groups.
LMIC context: Mental health is often a social justice issue. Deep stigma and pathologising/dismissive language influence how conditions are understood and responded to. This interacts with under-resourced systems to funnel youth into custodial or institutional care by default, with limited access to alternative care.
III. Main barriers to the right to mental health for young people
Availability:
Community-based and youth-friendly mental health services are scarce, while there is continued over-reliance on institutional and hospital-based models.
Climate change and related crises: Only 5% of national climate adaptation plans address mental health and psychosocial needs, despite growing evidence of climate change is causing psychological harm among young people.
Accessibility:
Access to care is alarmingly low: Only a small minority of children with mental health conditions receive treatment, with coverage as low as 6% in LMICs.
Inequitable access to affordable, WHO-recommended mental health medicines.
At least 25 countries still criminalise attempted suicide, which discourages help-seeking and worsens outcomes for those vulnerable.
Acceptability:
Youth participation is frequently tokenistic.
Weak regulation and safeguards around digital and AI-related harms: Governments acknowledge that digital experiences are increasingly affecting youth mental health, but haven't acted on updated regulation and protections.
Quality:
Low workforce capacity, weak follow-up, missing implementation/monitoring mechanisms
Youth mental health is often addressed in isolated or project-based programmes, rather than intersectorial and longitudinal interventions embedded across health, education, child protection, social protection, and digital governance systems.
IV. Laws, policies, and programmes affecting youth mental health
National youth mental health strategies: Several countries have adopted dedicated child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) or youth wellbeing strategies on prevention and community-based care like National Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy (Australia); Connecting for Life framework (Ireland).
Rights-based legal frameworks: Mental health laws in some jurisdictions align with human rights standards like the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), strengthening protections against coercion and institutionalisation (reforms in Colombia).
Integrated school-based programmes: High-income countries such as Finland and New Zealand embed mental health within education systems, improving early identification and access for adolescents.
Primary and community-based care models: Task-sharing and community mental health approaches in countries like Chile and Brazil demonstrate the feasibility of shifting care away from psychiatric institutions toward local, multidisciplinary services.
Youth participation mechanisms: Some national policies formally recognise youth participation in mental health governance and programme design, moving beyond tokenism toward co-creation (youth advisory councils in Scotland's health ministry).
Digital and helpline innovations: Scaled digital mental health platforms and youth helplines exist in countries like Canada and India have expanded reach, including young people in remote or underserved settings, with safeguards for privacy and quality of care.
Humanitarian and fragile settings: Psychosocial support programmes integrated into child protection and education responses in humanitarian contexts (eg. supported by UN agencies in parts of the Middle East and East Africa) show promise.
V. Public financing and resource allocation
Mental health receives only ~2% of global health budgets (closer to 1% in LMICs), resulting in an estimated US$200 billion annual funding gap and deep inequities in access. Existing funding models favour short-term, restrictive projects and systematically exclude youth-led and lived-experience-led organisations. Financing structures prioritise easily measurable outputs over outcomes related. Sustainable youth mental health systems require long-term, flexible, outcomes-focused financing, including budget and compensation for youth participation and focus on recovery, dignity, participation, and long-term wellbeing.
VI. Promising practices and solutions
Evidence-based suicide prevention: Integrate WHO’s LIVE LIFE framework into national strategies, including restriction of lethal means, responsible media reporting, socio-emotional life skills, and early identification and follow-up.
Community-based, rights-based care: Shift funding and delivery from institutions to primary and community-based services, including task-sharing, faith-based practices, school-based supports, peer programmes, family and aftercare systems, and and forms of care that exist outside formal mental health systems, like mutual aid and peer-care networks that resist custodial and medicalized care models, centering consent, access intimacy, interdependence, and lived expertise rather than diagnosis alone.
Youth as rights-holders and leaders: Ensure meaningful participation of children and young people as co-designers, decision-makers, and budget-holders in mental health governance, recognising lived experience as expertise.
Public health and prevention across the life course: Promote mental health at all stages of childhood and adolescence through early, integrated promotion, prevention, and care.
Cross-sectoral action: Integrate mental health into education, social protection, justice, digital governance, and humanitarian systems, beyond health and social care alone.
Focus on high-risk situations: Prioritise children and young people exposed to violence at family, community, and individual levels, including in conflict and humanitarian settings.
Human rights protection online and offline: Strengthen regulation and safeguards to protect young people from digital harms, misinformation, cyberbullying, and online exploitation.
Anti-stigma as structural reform: Treat stigma as a structural barrier, prioritising evidence-based anti-stigma interventions, including social contact approaches led by people with lived experience.
Data + lived experience for accountability: Pair quantitative data with lived experience narratives; ensure systematic data collection and disaggregation by age, gender, disability, migration status, and other factors to monitor inequities and guide policy.
International cooperation and accountability: Translate global commitments into national budgets, implementation plans, and measurable outcomes, with monitoring mechanisms centred on children and young people.