United for Global Mental Health

🌍At the African Summit on Suicide Prevention, organised by the Africa Suicide Prevention Association- (ASPA) in Kampala, advocates from Uganda, Kenya, and Ghana discuss ending the criminalisation of suicide attempts and the work needed beyond legal reform. Hear from Mwalimu Martin Amanya, BA.ED, MA Counseling from Uganda; Priscilla Makau from Kenya’s Ministry of Health and Emmanuel Nii-Boye Quarshie from the University of Ghana. 🎥 Watch their reflections on moving from punishment to care and turning changes in law into meaningful support for people who need it.

We are back from the 6th #ZeroSuicide International Summit, energised by new connections and a shared commitment to suicide prevention. 🌍 It was great to connect with global experts, advocates, and policymakers to share best practices in suicide prevention. Key highlights from our team: 🗣️ Shayni Geffen moderated a panel with Global Mental Health Action Network's Tiwa Ayeni on how lived experience can guide policy and system change for more relevant care. ⚖️  Global Mental Health Action Network (GMHAN)'s Suicide Prevention Working Group Co-Chairs Sia Edward and Abdullah Al Harun presented on why decriminalising suicide is vital for prevention. 🤝 Aastha S. shared how our advocacy at United for Global Mental Health—from climate to human rights—aims to help people access care before, during and after a crisis. 👏 Thank you to the amazing organisers, Zero Suicide International and Henry Ford Health for convening a space to advance suicide prevention. #ZeroSuicide #MentalHealth #GlobalHealth

🎙️Whose expertise counts when shaping mental health care? People with lived experience of mental health conditions bring knowledge that cannot be gained through clinical training alone. Yet their contributions are still too often treated as less important than those of mental health professionals. In our first episode of Mind. Set. Go!, UnitedGMH's Ali Hasnain asks Dr. Mark van Ommeren, Director of Mental Health at the World Health Organization, how we can challenge this thinking. His response offers an important reminder: lived experience and professional expertise are both needed. ▶️ Watch the conversation and listen to the full episode of Mind. Set. Go!: 🎧 SoundCloud: https://lnkd.in/eB5HpfZP 🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/dEt3JWG6 #MentalHealth #Deinstitutionalisation #WMHD2026

8.4 million is more than a number. It represents millions of people whose experience of mental health care may involve being separated from their families, communities and everyday lives. For many, this reflects systems that still rely heavily on psychiatric hospitals and institutions instead of accessible, community-based support. Deinstitutionalisation is about changing that. It means building mental health systems around dignity, rights, autonomy and care within communities. Learn more about our work on deinstitutionalisation ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dVZTsz4T

📽️ 🏃♂️ For Sir Mo Farah, four-time Olympic gold medallist, running is about much more than winning medals. It’s an essential part of looking after his mental health. And he's not alone. The more we move, the better we can feel. But here’s the challenge: promising work on movement and mental health is happening, but it’s mostly local and fragmented. And policy and funding haven’t caught up. At UnitedGMH we want to change that. We are bringing together athletes, brands, UN agencies, researchers and donors to push for the political commitment and funding needed to make movement for mental health accessible to everyone. In our newest film, Sir Mo joins leaders from lululemon, ASICS, New Balance, the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI), UNSW, the World Health Organization and UnitedGMH to make the case for why movement deserves a bigger place on the global mental health agenda. Watch the film and discover the movement we’re building together 👉 https://lnkd.in/d4nCXPGT

As Sarah Kline, Co-Founder of United for Global Mental Health, prepares to step down, she reflects on what it means to advocate from lived experience, the courage it takes to speak out, and why people with lived experience must have a seat at the decision-making table. In this personal reflection, Sarah looks back at the progress made alongside advocates, partners and funders around the world, while reminding us that much more remains to be done to ensure everyone, everywhere, receives mental health care rooted in dignity and respect. 👉 Read Sarah's reflection on why lived experience advocacy matters: https://lnkd.in/di9yBXPS

8.4 million people are admitted to psychiatric institutions every year. Instead of community support, millions are met with coercion. Instead of recovery, they are met with walls. It’s time to bring them home. In TIME today, Sri Lanka’s President, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and World Health Organization's Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, call for a shift from institutions to community-centred mental health care. Because right now, nearly half of all public mental health funding still goes to maintaining large psychiatric institutions, while community services go underfunded. It’s time to choose Care Not Custody. It's time to choose community over isolation, autonomy over coercion, dignity over stigma, recovery over restraint. Read the full piece 👉 https://lnkd.in/enQEwh6q Find out more about our Care Not Custody campaign 👉 https://lnkd.in/ePAiNiJq Mark van Ommeren, Aiysha Malik, Dr Antonis Kousoulis MD, DrPH, Divya Sharma, Ali Hasnain, Peter Varnum, Sarah Kline, Dave Gill, Sairica Rose

Today is World Mental Health Day, and this year feels markedly different than all the ones that have come before it. For me, this year's theme, "Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change" represents a sea-change in the collective awareness of the centrality of lived experience in our field. I still remember being the only student in a cohort of about sixty people in my Master's in Global Mental Health program in 2019 who would talk openly about my lived experience in class. Not to be self-aggrandising, and certainly not because I was the only one in the room with lived experience. But rather because back then, it simply wasn't the norm to speak up about one's lived experiences in academic settings, lest it put into question your credibility or professional expertise. Recently, a professor shared with me that I was the first student to be so consistently vocal about her lived experiences in the history of that program. I was surprised by this, but mostly really heartened to hear that since then, I have not been the last. If I've learned anything about the power of lived experience in the decade or so that I've been actively involved in this space, perhaps the greatest example of it has transpired this year when I became co-chair of the Global Mental Health Action Network (GMHAN)'s Expert by Experience Action Group on the Deinstitutionalisation of Mental Health Care. Not even a year has gone by since its formation, and our action group has: 💛 Contributed to the launch of United for Global Mental Health's Care Not Custody campaign, calling on governments to move away from institutionalisation and invest in rights-based, community-centred mental health care (https://lnkd.in/g5J2sfUV) 💛 Co-written a paper for the Journal of Public Mental Health, titled "Care is not control: What does truly integrated, community-based care look like, grounded in lived experience?" which will be out soon 💛 Provided feedback on the World Health Organization's new guidance on deinstitutionalisation (https://lnkd.in/gFNazSYs) 💛 Represented lived experience voices at the World Health Assembly, the recent WMHD webinar with the World Federation for Mental Health, and different global health forums around the world ...and there's still so much more in store. So today of all days, I'm galvanised and I am grateful. When you bring people with lived experience together and tap into our collective expertise, a brighter, kinder world suddenly becomes a little more possible, a little closer within reach. Happy World Mental Health Day, everyone.