Blog post by Markaya Henderson, Health Policy & Project Officer
Mental health matters. Not just in the clinic, but everywhere people live, learn, work and participate in society.
This European Mental Health Week, we join Mental Health Europe in calling on policymakers to widen their perspective. Mental health is not only about diagnosis, treatment, or what happens in someone’s brain. It’s about what happens in their lives.
Social policies shape mental health
Mental health does not exist in a vacuum. It is shaped by whether people have stable housing, enough income, access to education and employment, and the ability to participate in society. Poverty, social exclusion, discrimination and inaccessibility are not just injustices, they are also risks to our mental health.
Yet most policies treat mental health as an individual issue – something to be fixed with medication or therapy alone. This approach misses the point. People do not experience mental health problems in isolation, and we cannot expect lasting change without tackling the main causes.
Beyond the biomedical model
We must move away from medicalised approaches, that reduce mental health problems to a set of symptoms or chemical imbalances. This biomedical model of mental health lays blame to individuals rather than accounting for the ecosystem in which people develop mental health problems. This is very similar to the medical model of disability.
The psychosocial model of mental health reminds us that distress is often a reasonable response to our environments, including exclusion, discrimination or lack of support. Instead of asking “What’s wrong with you?” we must start asking “What’s happened to you?” – and, more importantly, “What needs to change?”
A shift is urgently needed
Shifting to the psychosocial model of mental health is especially urgent for persons with disabilities, who are more likely to experience poverty, unemployment and social exclusion.
At the same time, persons with disabilities experience higher unmet mental healthcare needs, reporting significantly higher rates of depression for example, than persons without disabilities.
The impact of these factors on mental health is clear. And what’s more, they can be mutually reinforcing. For example, our research shows that in Spain persons with psychosocial disabilities and mental health problems have among the lowest employment rates of any category of disability. In Ireland, they have the lowest average earnings, and the greatest wage gap compared to persons without disabilities.
A rights-based approach
Everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. That right is not fulfilled with a prescription alone. It means access to services that are available, affordable, and adapted to people’s real lives. It also means tackling the discrimination, violence and inequality that undermine wellbeing.
To do this, policymakers must adopt a ‘mental health in all policies’ approach – recognising that decisions in housing, education, labour and social protection all impact people’s mental health. We need policies that protect and promote social and economic rights.
That means:
- Adequate income support, housing, and healthcare
- Equal access to education and employment
- Freedom to live independently and in the community
- Support without coercion, rooted in free and informed consent
- Action to prevent discrimination and promote full participation
Nothing without us
Finally, people with lived experience – including persons with disabilities, users and survivors of psychiatry and persons with mental health problems – must be meaningfully involved in shaping the policies that affect them. Without this, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past: institutionalisation, coercion, and neglect.
This European Mental Health Week let’s make it clear: mental health is a social issue. The solutions are cross-cutting. The time to act is now.