The importance of mental health as a human rights concern, a major determinant of general health and well-being, and a critical factor in development progress is becoming more widely recognized. The debate is no longer about whether mental health is important, but rather how the development and humanitarian assistance community will address it through policy and/or programming.
To provide insights to inform programs and policies related to global mental health policy, a series of consultations, designed to be highly inclusive, participatory, and rooted in global practice, were held between November 2022 and January 2023. An RTAC team of researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign led consultations to gather inputs for the first USAID Mental Health Policy. The consultation process involved three main activities:
Virtual consultations with a range of stakeholder groups including USAID personnel, mental health clinicians, transnational and local nongovernmental organizations, donors and funders, academics, and youth;
Small group-based consultations with people with lived experience (people with life experiences involving systematic power dynamics of oppression, which include both first- person accounts and expert knowledge) as it relates to mental health; and
A United States government interagency consultation.
The consultations made sure to include the valuable and distinct perspectives of professionals or people with lived experience (PWLE) while also approaching mental health issues through multiple lenses and from a variety of angles, taking under consideration the expertise of mental health care professionals, non-governmental organizations, people with lived experience, researchers, and policymakers, among others. As a result of the consultation process, three reports were published: the Consultations Summary Report, the Consultations Recommendations Report, and the People with Lived Experience Consultations Summary Report.
Read more in USAID’s Mental Health Position Paper, USAID’s first policy document related to the integration of mental health into Agency programs.
