Key Facts About Mental health

Key facts
 Affordable, effective and feasible strategies exist to promote,
protect and restore mental health.
 The need for action on mental health is indisputable and urgent.
 Mental health has intrinsic and instrumental value and is integral to
our well-being.
 Mental health is determined by a complex interplay of individual,
social and structural stresses and vulnerabilities.
Concepts in mental health
Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the
stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to
their community. It is an integral component of health and well-being that
underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build
relationships and shape the world we live in. Mental health is a basic human right.
And it is crucial to personal, community and socio-economic development.
Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It exists on a complex
continuum, which is experienced differently from one person to the next, with
varying degrees of difficulty and distress and potentially very different social and
clinical outcomes.
Mental health conditions include mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities as
well as other mental states associated with significant distress, impairment in
functioning, or risk of self-harm. People with mental health conditions are more
likely to experience lower levels of mental well-being, but this is not always or
necessarily the case.
Determinants of mental health
Throughout our lives, multiple individual, social and structural determinants may
combine to protect or undermine our mental health and shift our position on the
mental health continuum.
Individual psychological and biological factors such as emotional skills, substance
use and genetics can make people more vulnerable to mental health problems.
Exposure to unfavourable social, economic, geopolitical and environmental
circumstances – including poverty, violence, inequality and environmental
deprivation – also increases people’s risk of experiencing mental health conditions.
Risks can manifest themselves at all stages of life, but those that occur during
developmentally sensitive periods, especially early childhood, are particularly
detrimental. For example, harsh parenting and physical punishment is known to
undermine child health and bullying is a leading risk factor for mental health
conditions.
Protective factors similarly occur throughout our lives and serve to strengthen
resilience. They include our individual social and emotional skills and attributes as
well as positive social interactions, quality education, decent work, safe
neighbourhoods and community cohesion, among others.
Mental health risks and protective factors can be found in society at different scales.
Local threats heighten risk for individuals, families and communities. Global threats
heighten risk for whole populations and include economic downturns, disease
outbreaks, humanitarian emergencies and forced displacement and the growing
climate crisis.
Each single risk and protective factor has only limited predictive strength. Most
people do not develop a mental health condition despite exposure to a risk factor
and many people with no known risk factor still develop a mental health condition.
Nonetheless, the interacting determinants of mental health serve to enhance or
undermine mental health.
Mental health promotion and prevention
Promotion and prevention interventions work by identifying the individual, social
and structural determinants of mental health, and then intervening to reduce risks,
build resilience and establish supportive environments for mental health.
Interventions can be designed for individuals, specific groups or whole populations.
Reshaping the determinants of mental health often requires action beyond the
health sector and so promotion and prevention programmes should involve the
education, labour, justice, transport, environment, housing, and welfare sectors. The
health sector can contribute significantly by embedding promotion and prevention
efforts within health services; and by advocating, initiating and, where appropriate,
facilitating multisectoral collaboration and coordination.
Suicide prevention is a global priority and included in the Sustainable Development
Goals. Much progress can be achieved by limiting access to means, responsible
media reporting, social and emotional learning for adolescents and early
intervention. Banning highly hazardous pesticides is a particularly inexpensive and
cost–effective intervention for reducing suicide rates.
Promoting child and adolescent mental health is another priority and can be
achieved by policies and laws that promote and protect mental health, supporting
caregivers to provide nurturing care, implementing school-based programmes and
improving the quality of community and online environments. School-based social
and emotional learning programmes are among the most effective promotion
strategies for countries at all income levels.
Promoting and protecting mental health at work is a growing area of interest and
can be supported through legislation and regulation, organizational strategies,
manager training and interventions for workers.
Mental health care and treatment
In the context of national efforts to strengthen mental health, it is vital to not only
protect and promote the mental well-being of all, but also to address the needs of
people with mental health conditions.
This should be done through community-based mental health care, which is more
accessible and acceptable than institutional care, helps prevent human rights
violations and delivers better recovery outcomes for people with mental health
conditions. Community-based mental health care should be provided through a
network of interrelated services that comprise:
 mental health services that are integrated in general health care, typically in
general hospitals and through task-sharing with non-specialist care providers
in primary health care;
 community mental health services that may involve community mental
health centers and teams, psychosocial rehabilitation, peer support services
and supported living services; and
 services that deliver mental health care in social services and non-health
settings, such as child protection, school health services, and prisons.
The vast care gap for common mental health conditions such as depression and
anxiety means countries must also find innovative ways to diversify and scale up
care for these conditions, for example through non-specialist psychological
counselling or digital self-help.
WHO response
All WHO Member States are committed to implementing the “Comprehensive
mental health action plan 2013–2030", which aims to improve mental health by
strengthening effective leadership and governance, providing comprehensive,
integrated and responsive community-based care, implementing promotion and
prevention strategies, and strengthening information systems, evidence and
research. In 2020, WHO’s “Mental health atlas 2020” analysis of country
performance against the action plan showed insufficient advances against the
targets of the agreed action plan.
WHO’s “World mental health report: transforming mental health for all” calls on all
countries to accelerate implementation of the action plan. It argues that all
countries can achieve meaningful progress towards better mental health for their
populations by focusing on three “paths to transformation”:
 deepen the value given to mental health by individuals, communities and
governments; and matching that value with commitment, engagement and
investment by all stakeholders, across all sectors;
  reshape the physical, social and economic characteristics of environments –
in homes, schools, workplaces and the wider community – to better protect
mental health and prevent mental health conditions; and
 strengthen mental health care so that the full spectrum of mental health
needs is met through a community-based network of accessible, affordable
and quality services and supports.
WHO gives particular emphasis to protecting and promoting human rights,
empowering people with lived experience and ensuring a multisectoral and
multistakeholder approach.
WHO continues to work nationally and internationally – including in humanitarian
settings – to provide governments and partners with the strategic leadership,
evidence, tools and technical support to strengthen a collective response to mental
health and enable a transformation towards better mental health for all.