Policy Brief – Stronger Together: A Path Towards an EU Mental Health Strategy for All

As the EU’s 2023 Comprehensive Approach to Mental Health nears the end of its cycle, Mental Health Europe (MHE) today publishes Stronger Together: A Path Towards an EU Mental Health Strategy for All. The brief sets out what the next decade of EU action on mental health must deliver and how.

The 2023 Approach marked a turning point: for the first time, mental health was recognised as a shared EU responsibility across health, employment, education, digital policy, and social inclusion, backed by 20 flagship initiatives and €1.23 billion. Yet three years on, these initiatives are winding down, no successors have been announced, and the crisis persists. Mental health conditions cost the EU over €600 billion annually, while suicide remains the leading cause of death among 15–19-year-olds.

The brief identifies three key structural gaps: voluntary participation, project-based responses to systemic challenges, and a lack of continuity beyond 2026. “What began as a political signal risks ending as a political footnote,” it warns.

MHE calls for an EU Mental Health Strategy (2027–2037) to be built on five priorities: embedding mental health in EU governance, shifting from treatment to prevention, accelerating community-based care, integrating mental health across all policies, and sustainably funding civil society and lived experience. These do not require new competences, but rather stronger alignment, continuity, and political ambition.

“The evidence is clear, the tools exist, and the political groundwork has been laid. What the next decade requires is the will to build, deliberately and collectively,” the brief concludes.

Mental health has been placed on the EU agenda. Now it has to be embedded in its design.