Global Mental Health Action Network (GMHAN)

📣Have you registered for our next Knowledge Exchange Session on Demystifying UN Systems and Processes? We’re hosting an interactive discussion, led by Sarah Kline - United for Global Mental Health, to explore how the UN system works for mental health. We’ll examine the roles of different stakeholders and the current opportunities to influence multilateral systems. Join the session to discover the key moments for advocacy throughout the year and the pathways for advocates and people with lived experience to make their voice heard. Lucero Andaluz Llerena and Dr. David Johnson, M.D. will share practical examples, outlining how they engaged with UN processes when mental health was firmly in the spotlight, and how they ensured mental health remained a priority when it wasn’t on the agenda. 💡At this session, we’ll also be launching our new comprehensive guide on How the UN System Works for Mental Health- designed specifically for mental health advocates! 👉 Sign up now to join the conversation and be the first to access this new resource: https://lnkd.in/e9W_fSSN #GMHANWMHD #LivedExpertise #MentalHealthAdvocacy

Join members of our WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Coalition for Mental Health and Substance Use Prevention for an important dialogue on the psychological impacts of climate and environmental change. Over a series of webinars, we will spotlight community needs, highlight personal insights and the voices of people with lived experience, and discuss how we can take collective action. 👉 Register by scanning the QR code below. 💡 Learn more about the WHO Regional Coalition and sign up here: https://lnkd.in/dmTs6XVx

📣NEW Geography of Stigma Initiative: Share your story, empower others, and inspire action. If you are someone who has lived experience of mental health stigma and/or an organisation that has been challenging it, we want to hear from you.  Sharing stories of the “toxic” impacts of mental health stigma and the tools used to challenge it in your community will help others take action around the world. Your story will help bring the devastating impacts of mental health stigma to life, and sharing insights from activity or research that has helped to challenge it in your context and culture will help others learn from you. 🌍 This new interactive global map called ‘The Geography of Stigma’ will map these experiences to help raise the profile of stigma, the need to address it and share effective culturally-specific approaches. 👉 Learn more and get involved here: https://lnkd.in/dFZAxrUY 🎥 We are looking for engaging content in many formats – blogs, videos, songs or poems, photography or art (with a narrative), and links to existing material, research or reports, as not all material has to be new. Seeing how extensive this problem is, in your own context, regionally or globally, will also help to advocate for stigma to become more of a policy and funding priority. This is something we hear about in almost every mental health speech or event and, more importantly, from people with lived experience of mental health issues across communities and cultures, globally. 🤝 It's time to take action on stigma. Join the Geography of Stigma initiative today. Taha Sabri Sue Baker OBE Judy Kariuki #GMHANWMHD #LivedExpertise #MentalHealthAdvocacy #TacklingStigma

🧠  Knowledge Exchange Session 1: Understanding Lived Experience What does "lived experience" truly mean in global mental health, and how do we shift from simple storytelling to recognized expertise? In our first session of GMHAN's 5-part learning and action series, speakers Parth and Sasha challenged us to look deeper into history, context, and structural power dynamics. ✨ Key Takeaways: 📌 Beyond Diagnosis: Two individuals with the same diagnosis can have entirely different lived experiences depending on their context, social, and economic barriers. 📌 Challenging Colonial Roots: Mental health frameworks have historically been shaped by ableist and Eurocentric principles that pathologized resistance and dissent. True progress requires reckoning with these histories and fighting for reparative justice, deinstitutionalization, and human rights. 📌 Beyond Storytelling: Sharing personal stories is a powerful tool against stigma, but true inclusion requires meaningful participation, shared power, and structural influence in decision-making. This was the 1st of our 5-part series running through November 10, 2026! 🚀 Join Us for Session 2: Don't miss our upcoming session next Tuesday, October 20th, focusing on demystifying UN processes. Register here to access the meeting link! https://lnkd.in/edcHMYsj Join our free membership platform, Circle, to access the resources and more! www.gmhan.org/join #GMHANWMHD #WMHDTakeover #LivedExpertise #ExpertsByExperience #GlobalMentalHealth

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

You keep hearing about lived experience, but have you had the chance to explore its deeper dimensions and the value it brings to the table? Well, here's your opportunity! Tomorrow, Tuesday, October 13, at 3:00 PM (Beirut time), were kicking off the Global Mental Health Action Network (GMHAN) Lived Experience Knowledge Exchange Series with our first interactive session: Understanding Lived Experience. I am delighted to be joined by the wonderful Parth Sharma, who will explore Lived Experience as a form of expertise, as well as its history and movements, while I will be focusing on the role of context, diversity, and going beyond personal storytelling. This year's World Mental Health Day theme holds particular meaning for me. My own lived experience has shaped the woman I am today, teaching me to transform personal struggles and the knowledge gained from navigating systemic barriers into advocacy for change, particularly in challenging contexts like Lebanon. Through my regional leadership role within Global Mental Health Action Network (GMHAN), I have had the wonderful opportunity to collaborate on this five-session series, bringing together brilliant speakers to explore lived experience as a form of expertise, its value in shaping mental health systems, meaningful participation, advocacy, leadership, and collective action. Whether you are familiar with the concept or looking to deepen your understanding, I warmly invite you to join us tomorrow! Register through this link: https://lnkd.in/dZGvyVDN #LivedExperience #MentalHealth #MeaningfulParticipation #GMHAN #WorldMentalHealthDay

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.

This World Mental Health Day, one message is at the heart of our work: People with lived experience must be at the forefront of shaping the future of mental health. Together with the Global Mental Health Action Network (GMHAN) and partners including World Health Organization, we’ve been sharing what that looks like in practice. In our special #WorldMentalHealthDay newsletter, you’ll find: 🎥 A rewatch link to the official World Mental Health Day webinar, featuring experts by experience from Indonesia, New Zealand and Rwanda 📄 WHO’s new guidance on deinstitutionalisation (DI), shaped by GMHAN experts by experience 🤝 The new DI Allies Group, for anyone who wants to stand alongside experts by experience in pushing for Care Not Custody 🎙 The first episode of our new podcast, Mind. Set. Go!, where UnitedGMH’s Ali Hasnain and WHO’s Dr Mark van Ommeren discuss the urgent need for DI and how it can be done properly 📘 GMHAN’s new guide to working respectfully with people with lived experience 🏃 Our work on movement for mental health, and how athletes with lived experience are at the heart of it Find all of this, and much more, in our World Mental Health Day newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e3q_VdRS Want our newsletter in your inbox every month? Sign up here 👉 https://eepurl.com/gq5EF5 #WMHD #MentalHealth