On World Mental Health Day, JA PreventNCD highlights the importance of involving people with lived experience in shaping mental health policies and services, including efforts to address structural stigma and discrimination across Europe.
Every year on 10 October, World Mental Health Day provides an opportunity to raise awareness of mental health and the actions needed to promote wellbeing. This year's theme, “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change,” highlights the importance of ensuring that people with lived experience of mental health challenges have a meaningful role in decisions that affect their lives.
People who have experienced mental health challenges bring valuable knowledge and perspectives that can help identify barriers, improve services and inform more inclusive policies. Yet their voices have not always been sufficiently represented in the development of mental health services and support systems.
Within the European Joint Action JA PreventNCD, this principle is reflected in ongoing work to address structural stigma and discrimination related to mental health, with a particular focus on understanding how policies, practices and systems can create barriers and how these can be reduced.
Addressing structural stigma and discrimination through JA PreventNCD
Stigma and discrimination remain significant barriers to mental health and wellbeing. Beyond the attitudes and behaviours of individuals, structural stigma can be embedded in policies, institutional practices and service systems, affecting people's access to healthcare, opportunities and participation in society.
Addressing these barriers requires more than raising awareness. It calls for examining how systems operate, identifying discriminatory practices and developing policies that promote equity, inclusion and respect for people experiencing mental health challenges.
Within JA PreventNCD, this work forms part of the project's broader efforts to strengthen Mental Health in All Policies (MiAP), an approach that recognises the importance of considering mental health and wellbeing across different policy sectors.
As part of this initiative, Iceland leads efforts to map stigma related to mental health and identify effective ways to address it at policy level. Participating European countries are examining how stigma and discrimination are reflected in policies and practices, with the aim of developing recommendations for reducing these barriers.
The work draws on a scoping review of existing research, a survey across participating countries and input from people with lived experience. Together, these will help identify practical ways to address structural stigma and discrimination in mental health policies and services across Europe.
Learning from lived experience: examples from Iceland
There are already examples of how people with lived experience can contribute to the development of mental health services and policies. Iceland offers several examples of this approach in practice.
In recent years, peer support has gradually become more established within mental health services. Peer support workers draw on their own experiences of mental health challenges to provide understanding, encouragement and support to others.
This approach reflects the principles of recovery-oriented mental health care, which emphasises empowerment, self-determination and people's ability to take an active role in their own recovery.
The Icelandic Recovery College provides one example of how lived experience can support learning, understanding and recovery. By sharing personal experiences in a constructive and supportive environment, peer support workers can help challenge feelings of shame and isolation that often accompany mental health challenges.
Peer support has also been introduced in hospital, community and primary care mental health services in Iceland. These initiatives demonstrate how people with lived experience can contribute directly to the delivery of mental health support.
At the policy level, Iceland established a Mental Health Council in 2023 to advise the government on mental health policy and development. The council includes representatives of people with lived experience alongside other stakeholders, providing an example of how different perspectives can be incorporated into policymaking.
These examples from Iceland show how people with lived experience can contribute to improving mental health services and influencing policy. Similar approaches can help strengthen the involvement of people with lived experience in other countries.
From listening to action
Across Europe, greater recognition of lived experience is helping to shape discussions about mental health, human rights and equitable access to services. However, meaningful participation requires more than inviting people to share their stories. Their perspectives must also have an opportunity to influence decisions and bring about change.
This is particularly important when addressing structural stigma and discrimination, where barriers may be embedded in the very systems intended to provide support.
Important steps have been taken towards greater involvement of people with lived experience in mental health services and policy, but there is still more to be done. Listening is important, but it is even more important that what we hear has an impact. We hope that the work within JA PreventNCD can contribute to this progress by helping to identify practical ways to reduce structural stigma and discrimination across Europe.
Author
Helga Arnardóttir,
Project manager at the Directorate of Health in Iceland