World Mental Health Day 2026

World Mental Health Day 2026

 

World Mental Health Day
10 October 2026

Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change

World Mental Health Day is an opportunity to meaningfully engage with people with lived experience (PWLE) of mental health conditions and to recognize their knowledge as a vital form of expertise. This year’s campaign calls for their voices to shape the policies, services and decisions that affect their lives.

Lived experience is what someone has experienced themselves, especially when it gives the individual knowledge or understanding that people who have only heard or learnt about such experiences do not have.

Too often, PWLE are asked to share their stories but excluded from decisions. Meaningful engagement extends beyond simply being heard.

It means creating opportunities for people to influence decisions, co-design services, strengthen peer-led approaches, challenge stigma and strengthen accountability. When PWLE are meaningfully engaged, mental health systems are likely to become more person-centred, rights-based and responsive to people's needs and concerns.

One important priority for PWLE is the shift away from long-stay psychiatric institutions towards community-based, person-centered mental health care. Institutions tend to be isolating and are too often associated with poor-quality care, coercion and human rights abuses.  Deinstitutionalization requires a carefully planned shift in funding, services and support so that people can live in their communities. Reflecting this priority, WHO will  launch practical guidance on deinstitutionalization.

On this World Mental Health Day, let us move from listening to action – and build mental health systems with PWLE, not merely for them.

Campaign theme

Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change

 

Hashtag

#WorldMentalHealthDay

 

WMHD 2026 webinar

To join, please register here

 

Did you know?

Meaningful engagement is still not standard practice.

Of the countries responding to the WHO Mental Health Atlas 2024 survey:

  • 37% reported having included PWLE in training delivered to primary health care workers on mental health.
  • 45% reported having ongoing collaboration with PWLE and family or caregiver advocacy groups in the planning, delivery or monitoring of mental health promotion, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation services.
  • 59% reported that mental health legislation had been developed in consultation with PWLE
  • 80% of countries with a mental health policy or plan reported that it had been developed in consultation with PWLE. 

Lived experience can help make mental health programmes more relevant.

PWLE bring knowledge that cannot be gained from professional training or research alone. They can identify barriers that others may overlook and help ensure that policies, services and programmes respond to people’s actual needs and circumstances.

The shift toward community-based care is happening too slowly.

About 1 in 10 of countries (9%) have fully transitioned from institution-based mental health care to community-based models. Around half (53%) remain in the early stages of this transition. And around half (49%) of reported psychiatric hospital admissions are involuntary, and more than one in five hospital stays (23%) last longer than a year. Deinstitutionalization (DI) means developing quality services and practical support within communities so that people can live with dignity, exercise choice, and remain connected to their families and communities.

 

Key messages

Group of people working together in an inclusive mental health workshop.

Lived experience is expertise

 

Lived experience comes from personally experiencing mental health conditions and seeking, receiving – or being unable to get – adequate care and support. Lived experience of mental health conditions takes many different forms. No one person can speak for everyone.

People with lived experience understand mental health systems in ways that cannot be gained through professional training or research alone. Their expertise is essential to helping mental health systems identify what needs to change. 

Group of people sitting together in a circle in a library

People with lived experience must be central in shaping mental health care: nothing about us without us

Increasingly people with lived experience are being heard, but there is still much work to do. Mental health policies and services are stronger when they are designed, delivered and evaluated with people who use them. Most people with lived experience understand what is required for recovery. Meaningful engagement does not only mean sharing testimonies.

Like other forms of expertise, lived experience expertise helps guide decisions from the beginning and throughout—from planning policies and services to putting them into practice and assessing whether they work.

Using the WHO Framework for meaningful engagement, governments, health systems and organizations should embed people with lived experience as equal partners across mental health policy development, service design, implementation and evaluation.

Man standing with hands on a woman's shoulders

Deinstitutionalization and rights-based care are important to many people with lived experience

Millions of people with mental health conditions remain isolated in institutions rather than receiving the support they need to live and participate in society. People with lived experience want to live with dignity, freedom and support. They want rights-based, person-centred care, rather than custodial systems. We must listen to people who have experienced institutional care and involve them at every stage of deinstitutionalization. They have the right to access person-centred care, housing, education, work and social supports in the community.

Campaign materials

Coming soon

WHO QualityRights in Mental Health course