WHO blueprint for mental health policy and law reform

Mental health is a public health priority and a fundamental human right. Yet, many systems remain reliant on biomedical models and institutional care, overlooking social and structural determinants and international human rights standards. People with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities often face discrimination, stigma, and coercion in care settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified awareness of mental health needs, the harms of isolation, service disruptions, and confinement in institutions. Broader challenges—climate change, conflict, displacement, and economic instability—have worsened trauma and adverse social conditions like poverty and inequality. These stressors, combined with fragmented governance, insufficient funding, and outdated laws that allow involuntary treatment and guardianship, entrench inequities. A lack of coordinated action across sectors like education, housing, and employment demands urgent attention.

WHO’s Mental Health Policy and Strategic Action Plan Guidance and  WHO/OHCHR Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation provide complementary, rights-based frameworks for reform. Both call for coordinated policy and legislative changes to close care gaps, eliminate coercion, and build systems rooted in dignity, autonomy, and inclusion.

Required reforms 

Both the Policy Guidance and the Law Guidance emphasize a core set of interrelated areas that require reform. These include:

• Strengthened governance, leadership, and accountability mechanisms with clear mandates, dedicated coordination bodies, and active participation of people with lived experience in both policy and legislative development.
• The transformation of service delivery from institutional to community‑based care that incorporates a network of interconnected services, including: mental health services integrated into general health care; community mental health centres; outreach, providing care at home or in public spaces; and access to key social and other support services.
• Workforce development that emphasizes competency‑based training, reflective supervision, and formal inclusion of peer support roles to deliver person‑centred, rights‑based care.
• Financing reforms that align budgets and insurance schemes to prioritize community services over institutional care, ensuring better outcomes and respect of human rights.
• Cross‑sectoral actions that address social and structural determinants—through education, employment, housing, social protection and other policies—to reduce stigma and discrimination and protect and promote mental health.
• The elimination of coercion and discrimination: replacing guardianship with supported decision‑making, eliminating forced admission and treatment, upholding informed consent, and embedding anti‑discrimination provisions in policy and law.
• Robust monitoring, evaluation, and accountability systems- including key indicators in national information systems - and periodic policy and legislative reviews allowing countries to track progress, inform continuous improvement, and safeguard human rights.

WHO Guidance on mental health policy and strategic action plans  

The guidance is organized into five modules that provide a comprehensive approach to the development and implementation of policy and strategic action plans. The Guidance centres on five policy areas, each of which includes a menu of directives, strategies and actions to help policymakers tailor reforms to their specific context and resources.

• Policy Area 1: Leadership, governance and enablers – coordination, financing, information systems, involvement of people with lived experience, civil society and communities, and rights-based law reform.
• Policy Area 2: Service organization and development – comprehensive, community-based, rights-based, person-centred and recovery-oriented services; integrated mechanisms addressing social and structural factors; partnerships for inclusion, socioeconomic development and rights protection; and deinstitutionalization.
• Policy Area 3: Human resource and workforce development – a diverse, competent, resilient, multidisciplinary workforce through task-sharing, competency-based curricula, training, recruitment, retention and staff well-being.
• Policy Area 4: Person-centred, recovery-oriented and rights-based assessment, interventions and support – multidisciplinary assessment of mental health and support needs; physical health and lifestyle; psychological, social, economic and psychotropic drug interventions.
• Policy Area 5: Sector contributions to social and structural determinants – improving literacy and mindsets to combat stigma, discrimination and exclusion; and joint actions on social and structural determinants and society-wide issues affecting mental health and well-being.

WHO/OHCHR Guidance on mental health, human right, legislation

This joint WHO-OHCHR guidance outlines essential legal provisions to safeguard rights: uphold autonomy, informed consent, and equality. It mandates deinstitutionalization, oversight of involuntary detention, and access to a full range of community-based services. It promotes legal parity between mental and general health services and embeds anti-discrimination protections in all sectors. Supported decision-making, prohibition of forced treatment, and recognition of advance directives are key components. The guidance also calls for participatory lawmaking and offers a practical checklist to evaluate alignment with human rights standards.

Leveraging both guidance frameworks for implementation

Countries can adopt a stepwise, adaptable process starting with a comprehensive analysis, followed by the formation of a multistakeholder drafting committee. Using WHO Guidance, stakeholders can co-develop policies and laws tailored to national contexts. After public consultation and adoption, implementation requires monitoring and evaluation with clear indicators—ensuring systems are effective, inclusive, and rights-based.

Key messages:

1. Five key policy areas can be reformed to promote rights-based mental health: leadership and governance; service organization; workforce development; person-centered interventions; and addressing social and structural determinants of mental health. 
2. These policy areas are designed to protect human rights; promote holistic care with an emphasis on lifestyle, physical health, and psychological, social and economic interventions; address social and economic factors that shape mental health; and implement prevention strategies and promote population-wide mental health and well-being. 
3. Attention to the social determinants of mental health, a focus on rights-based care at the community level, and involvement of PWLE in policies and programmes that affect them are integral to creating supportive societies and mental health systems that promote strong mental health and well-being.