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Responses to questions about WHOs Special Initiative for Mental Health

How have countries for WHOs Special Initiative for Mental Health been chosen?

There is no formula to selecting countries under the WHO’s Special Initiative for Mental Health. One non-negotiable requirement is a commitment from a country’s Ministry of Health to work with WHO for at least 5-years, towards transforming mental health systems and systems, to ultimately increase the availability of mental health services across the country (or identified geographical areas).

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Transforming National Mental Health Services

On Tuesday 28th March, the Global Mental Health Action Network brought together a panel of experts to explore how national mental health services can be transformed.

The panellists discussed the key achievements and successes of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Special Initiative for Mental Health (SIMH) and outlined some of the barriers to systems-level change that limited progress in the Special Initiative (SI) countries.

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"I Hope This Helps" - a Global Mental Health Documentary

I hope this helps - a global mental health documentary

We believe this film can be a powerful resource to support the awareness and advocacy work of others. To this end, we are very keen to work with any organisations who share our purpose and can help shape the film, ensuring it supports mental health campaigners around the world.

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Transforming National Mental Health Services 

The WHO Special Initiative for Mental Health, launched in 2019, advances policies, advocacy and human rights, to rapidly scale-up quality interventions and services for people with mental, neurological and substance use conditions.

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MHForAll Webinar: Countdown 2030 & Data Advocacy

Globally, nationally, and locally, there is a lack of mental health data. Access to good data is essential for global mental health advocacy, however issues with data collection and aggregation, access and visibility make this challenging.

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Countdown Global Mental Health 2030

Countdown for Global Mental Health 2030 is a partnership between Global Mental Health @Harvard, WHO, UNICEF, the Global Mental Health Peer Network and United for Global Mental Health.

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Making mental health a priority in 2023

Mental health has become a widely discussed issue in recent years but much remains to be done to ensure it is prioritised in the years ahead. On Tuesday 31st January, a panel of experts convened to share their perspectives on the actions that need to be taken to ensure mental health is made a priority in 2023.

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GMHAN Action Plan 2023

GMHAN is creating a global network where every campaigner and professional working in mental health has somewhere to go to access the support they need to make the change they want to see. We are delighted to share our 2023 Action Plan with you all, which highlights our ambitions, targets and ways of working for the year ahead.

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Schools: the key to better mental health for children and young people

The theme of World Mental Health Day 2022 was ‘Make Mental Health and Well-being a Global Priority for All.’ To realise this aspiration, we first need to recognise children and young people are a unique group, with their own particular psychological make-up and mental health needs.

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Mental Health and Wellbeing of Marginalised Youth during Covid 19 Pandemic.

Against a decade-long pattern of deteriorating mental health conditions among youth, Covid 19 pandemic made the situation far more worse. As per the Youth-led Action Research on Covid-19 pandemic on Marginalised Youth study, youth were forced to face the fear of losing their loved ones, stress, and anxiety over their future uncertainty, financial hardships, lack of opportunities and social isolation made them more vulnerable.

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GMHAN Annual Meeting 2023 - Register your interest now!

In 2022, we saw the largest gathering of our network to date, with over 600 participants from 77 countries across six virtual sessions of the GMHAN Annual meeting. As we look ahead to the planning of our 2023 Annual Meeting, we have listened to your feedback through our annual survey and other forums/channels and realise there is a big demand for us to convene in person once again!

To help us plan we would love to ask you some questions and get a better understanding of where, when and IF we should host our annual meeting in person in 2023.

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#MHForAll webinar: Mental Health & Human Rights

Maternal and perinatal mental health matters. In this #MHForAll webinar, we brought together a panel of experts to discuss the importance of integrating mental health support, specifically perinatal mental health (PMH) care, into existing maternal and child health services.

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#MHForAll webinar: Mother and Child Mental Health

Maternal and perinatal mental health matters. In this #MHForAll webinar, we brought together a panel of experts to discuss the importance of integrating mental health support, specifically perinatal mental health (PMH) care, into existing maternal and child health services.

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Caregiver and child mental health: Three facts we know and three actions we are taking

For more than six decades the Bernard van Leer Foundation have worked to improve opportunities for young children and the people who care for them. Three years ago, we chose to pay more attention to caregivers’ mental health, recognizing its crucial role in giving babies and toddlers a good start in life. These are some of our insights with examples of how we have endeavoured with our partners to put our growing knowledge of mental health into action for the early years.

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World Mental Health Day 2022: Our partners’ work

This year’s theme for World Mental Health Day was to make Mental Health & Wellbeing for all a Global Priority. Members of GMHAN around the world have raised our voices to demand both attention and action on mental health. Here are examples of what some of GMHAN’s 2200 members have done to celebrate World Mental Health Day 2022.

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#MHForAll webinar: World Mental Health Day - Reflections & next steps

On World Mental Health Day (WMHD) this year, an unprecedented number of organisations and stakeholders came forth to highlight the need for increased mental health awareness, support, and financing. Across the world, new reports, funding mechanisms, and campaigns were launched to catalyse change at all levels of society.

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The urgent need for mental health investment in Africa: Challenges and opportunities

This year’s World Mental Health Day (WMHD) was observed with the theme “Make mental health and well-being for all a global priority”. This was an opportunity to highlight a pressing matter that is often neglected.

Mental health is a crucial issue for the well-being of an individual, however, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in every 8 people, or 970 million people around the world have mental health disorders.

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