A comprehensive approach to mental health calls upon national and regional actors, health and non-health policy sectors and relevant stakeholders, ranging from patient and civil society organisations, to academia, and industry, to work together. It aims to put tools in place to drive change, including at global level, boost existing structures and monitor actions.

This Communication focuses on how to bring relief to people suffering from mental health and on prevention policies. It draws on three guiding principles that should apply to every EU citizen:

• to have access to adequate and effective prevention;
• to have access to high quality and affordable mental healthcare and treatment;
• to be able to reintegrate society after recovery.

These guiding principles inform all aspects of this initiative and are directly mirrored in the chapters therein.

It will support Member States in their efforts to achieve the World Health Organization (WHO) targets for non-communicable diseases by 2025 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)9 by 2030, including on mental health.

The Commission calls on the European Parliament and Member States to work together in taking forward the initiatives put forward in this strategic Communication, which lay the foundations for sustained action at national and EU level for a comprehensive, prevention- oriented and multistakeholder approach to mental health.

Read the background document here: COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS on a comprehensive approach to mental health.

Main source: https://health.ec.europa.eu/index_en