Mind our rights now! The 2021 Global Mental Health Summit

There is growing political momentum in recognising the importance of mental health: the upcoming French Summit needs to turn momentum into action.

Next week the Global Mental Health Summit will take place in Paris, hosted by the French Government. Following on from the summits in London in 2018 and Amsterdam in 2019, this third summit will be a milestone moment in mobilising the global community to accelerate progress on rights in mental health, and promote quality care systems.

The “Mind Our Rights, Now!” mental health summit will focus on three key areas: accelerating the international momentum for human rights in the field of mental health; promoting services that protect the dignity and rights of all; and sharing positive lessons learned across the field.

With participants including professionals, civil society representatives and policy makers in psychiatry and mental health, the summit is open to the public. There is a series of plenary sessions and workshops taking place over the two days.

Sarah Kline, CEO and Co-Founder of UnitedGMH, will be co-chairing a working group session (workshop no. 5) on sustaining political momentum globally on mental health and psychosocial support, which will be held on October 5th 2021 at 14.00 – 16.30 Paris/09.00 – 11.30 New York. 

Speakers in the session currently include:

  • French Ambassador for Global Health, Stephanie Seydoux
  • Unicef Deputy Executive Director, Charlotte Petri Gornitzka
  • Nigerian activist, Hauwa Ojeifo, of She Writes Woman
  • Kenyan activist, Michael Njenga, of CBM;
  • Tongan intellectual disabilities expert, Dr Agathe Sogoyou
  • Indian philanthropist and activist, Raj Mariwala of the Mariwala Health Initiative
  • Executive Director of Bernard van Leer Foundation, Cecilia Vaca Jones

Together they’ll discuss how we can ensure the adoption of a rights-based approach to mental health, the ways in which we can best address the social determinants of mental health,  and the promotion of transparent and independent monitoring and accountability mechanisms.

Throughout the summit UnitedGMH and our partners will be calling for greater action. We will be highlighting our work on rights including the recent report on decriminalising suicide; our work on social determinants of mental health including our work on the Return on the Individual report; the need for better monitoring and accountabilty including the recently launch Countdown Global Mental Health 2030 dashboard and report.