Your Majesty Queen Mathilde,
Your Excellency Olivier Véran,
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
Bonjour à tous, and good morning to you all.
This Sunday marks World Mental Health Day; an opportunity to draw attention to the global scale of mental health problems, and to identify solutions.
The COVID-19 pandemic is by no means over, and continues to have a profound effect on mental health globally.
Too many countries already had too few services for mental health, but those services have been disrupted by the pandemic, putting more people at greater risk – and as Queen Mathilde said, stigma and violence.
Despite the heightened awareness of mental health issues globally in recent years, the average percentage of government health budgets spent on mental health has barely increased, remaining at just 2%.
Violations of the human rights of people with mental health conditions remain all too common.
Awareness and advocacy are not enough if they’re not translated into robust, rights-based mental health services.
In May of this year, the World Health Assembly recognized the importance of expanding access to quality mental health services.
Countries endorsed new options for implementing WHO’s Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan, extended to 2030, and new indicators for measuring progress.
During the last six months, WHO has released comprehensive guidance on establishing and scaling up mental health services that are respectful of human rights.
We have launched LIVE LIFE, a new guide on implementing suicide prevention activities, from small-scale interventions to comprehensive national programmes.
And we have published the Helping Adolescents Thrive toolkit, in collaboration with our partner organization UNICEF, which contains strategies for promoting and protecting the mental health of adolescents.
Today, we’re calling on every country to commit to concrete investments in mental health and psychosocial support, as part of its journey towards universal health coverage.
Because there is no health without mental health.
I thank you.