Civil Society and Global Mental Health

This page aims to provide a summary of the main organisations working to represent people, raise the profile, and address the needs in relation to mental health. I’m focusing on the world of development rather than humanitarian relief as the latter is better developed as a sector. I am also not aiming to cover research-focused organisations and initiatives. I’m also not going to try and cover country level representative organisations as, even though there are nothing like enough, there are a fair number of them (and there is work going on to try and map them). Finally, I am also not trying to duplicate the excellent work of the Mental Health Innovation Network. Their website is well worth time to explore, especially the ‘innovations’ section which has hundreds of fantastic initiatives from around the world.

Even given the above exceptions, I am sure that the list below is not complete (and possibly inaccurate in places) so please let me know if there is anything that needs adding or amending. Given I sit in the UK it currently reflects my networks and contacts – over time I hope it will expand to more fully reflect the wider world. Over time I also hope that the organisations and structures will become stronger to ensure that civil society from the global south has a strong voice in global mental health.

Initially, I will just put a list in place with links to relevant sites but over time I will try to add short descriptions as well. Please do let me know who I am missing!

Global & Regional Infrastructure and Representative Bodies:

Organisations Implementing mental health programmes

Organisations working to incorporate mental health into their work