Guterres urges community-centred mental healthcare

In a message published by the UN on 2 October, ahead of World Mental Health Day on 10 October, Secretary-General António Guterres called for people with lived experience of mental health challenges to help shape the decisions, services and policies that affect them. He said they are too often excluded from those decisions. [1]

Guterres identified this year’s theme as “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change”. He singled out young people facing economic uncertainty, climate anxiety and online harms, alongside people affected by conflict and humanitarian crises, where he said disrupted services compound distress. [1]

He said more than 80 per cent of countries provide mental health services in psychiatric hospitals. That figure refers to countries offering services in those hospitals, not the proportion of patients receiving care there. [1]