Mental health concepts
Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables us to cope with life's stressors, realize our potential, learn and work well, and contribute to community life. It is part of health and well-being, upon which rest our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, form relationships and shape the world in which we live. Mental health is a fundamental right of every human being. It is also an essential aspect of personal, community and socio-economic development.
Mental health is not defined solely by the absence of a mental disorder. It is a complex reality that varies from person to person, with varying degrees of pain and suffering and social and clinical manifestations that can be very different.
Mental health problems include mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities as well as other mental states associated with significant distress, impaired functioning, or risk of self-harm. People who have health problems are more likely to experience lower mental well-being, but this is not always or necessarily the case.
Determinants of mental health
Throughout our lives, multiple individual, social and likely determinants combine to protect or weaken our mental health and thus alter our position on the mental health spectrum.
Individual psychological and biological factors, such as emotional skills, substance use and genetics, can make some people more vulnerable to mental health issues.
Exposure to reduced social, economic, geopolitical and environmental circumstances – including poverty, violence, inequality and deprivation of good environmental conditions – also increases the risk of developing mental health problems.
The risks can manifest themselves at any stage of life, but those that apply during critical periods of development, especially in early childhood, are particularly harmful. For example, harsh parenting practices and corporal punishment are known to compromise child health and bullying is a major risk factor in the context of mental health problems.
Conversely, protective factors manifest throughout our lives and build our resilience. These factors notably define individual social and emotional skills and attributes, but also positive social interactions, quality education, decent work, a safe neighborhood and community cohesion.
The risk and protective factors that influence mental health manifest themselves in society at different scales. Local threats increase the risk to individuals, families and communities. Global threats increase the risk to populations as a whole; they can be economic setbacks, disease outbreaks, humanitarian emergencies, forced displacement or the growing climate crisis.
Each risk or protective factor has only limited predictive power. Most people do not develop mental health problems after being exposed to a risk factor, while many individuals develop in the absence of a known risk factor. It is the interactions between the determinants of mental health that make or break mental health.
Promotion of mental health and prevention of mental health problems
Promotion and prevention interventions aim to identify the individual, social and hindering determinants of mental health, and then take action to reduce risk, increase resilience and create supportive environments for mental health. They can be designed for individuals, specific groups or populations as a whole.
To act on the determinants of mental health, it is often necessary to take measures that succeed in the health sector alone. Promotion and prevention programs should therefore involve the sectors of education, labour, justice, transport, environment, housing and social protection. The health sector can play an important role in integrating promotion and prevention efforts within health services, by promoting, initiating and, where appropriate, facilitating multisectoral collaboration and coordination.
Suicide prevention is a global priority and part of the Sustainable Development Goals. We can considerablyWe can move forward on this issue by limiting access to the means of suicide, ensuring responsible media coverage, promoting social-emotional learning in adolescents, and intervening early. Banning highly hazardous pesticides is a particularly inexpensive and cost-effective intervention to reduce suicide rates.
Promoting child and adolescent mental health is another priority. This means adopting policies and laws that promote and protect mental health, supporting caregivers to provide nurturing care, implementing school-based programs and improving the quality of the community context. and the digital environment. School-based social-emotional learning programs are among the most effective promotion strategies in all countries, regardless of income level.
The promotion and protection of mental health at work is an area of growing interest, where legislation and regulation, organizational strategies, leadership training and worker interventions can play a role.
Mental health care and support
As part of national efforts to strengthen mental health, it is crucial to not only protect and promote the mental well-being of all; the needs of people with mental health problems must also be met.
This includes providing mental health care at the community level, as such care is more accessible and acceptable than institutional care, helps prevent human rights abuses and results in better healing outcomes for people with mental health problems. Community-wide mental health care should be delivered through a network of closely linked services, including:
- mental health services integrated with general health services, usually offered in general hospitals and in collaboration with non-specialist primary health care providers;
- community-wide mental health services, which may involve community mental health teams and centres, psychosocial rehabilitation services, self-help services and self-help services; and
- mental health services offered in social services and in non-health settings, such as child protection services, school health services and prison services.
- Given the major gaps in the treatment of common mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, countries must find innovative ways to diversify and intensify the treatment of these problems, for example by non-specialized psychological support or digital support services.
WHO response
All WHO Member States have committed to implementing the Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2030, which aims to improve mental health through more effective leadership and governance , comprehensive, integrated and responsive care in a community setting, promotion and prevention strategies, and strengthening information systems, evidence and research activities. In 2020, country results against the Action Plan were analyzed as part of the Mental Health Atlas 2020; it emerged from this analysis that the progress made was insufficient to achieve the targets set in the Action Plan.
In its report entitled “World Mental Health Report: Transforming mental health for all”, WHO calls on countries to accelerate the implementation of the Action Plan. She believes that all countries can make real progress that will improve the mental health of their people, by focusing on three “processes of transformation”:
increase the value placed on mental health by individuals, communities and governments and ensure that all stakeholders, in all sectors, commit to and invest in mental health;
act on the physical, social and economic characteristics of family, school, professional and community environments in the broad sense in order to better preserve mental health and prevent mental health problems; and
strengthen mental health care so that the full range of mental health needs is covered by a community network of accessible, affordable and quality support services.
WHO places special emphasis oncent on the protection and promotion of human rights, on the empowerment of people who have lived experience of mental health problems and on the development of a multisectoral approach involving various stakeholders.
WHO continues to work at national and international levels – including in humanitarian settings – to provide governments and partners with strategic leadership, evidence, tools and technical support to strengthen collective action in mental health and enable transformation that promotes better mental health for all.
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