WHO Advances Mental Health work: Roadmap on Lived Experience, Joint Programme on Children and Adolescents’ Mental Health

WHO Advances Mental Health work: Roadmap on Lived Experience, Joint Programme on Children and Adolescents’ Mental Health

In the new Roadmap “Transforming mental health through lived experience”, launched in June 2025, WHO Regional Office for Europe, in collaboration with the European Commission, provides a structured framework to integrate lived/living experience expertise into mental health policy, services, community, and workforce. The Roadmap, aims to empower countries to move towards co-creation of mental health services, while acknowledging the systemic challenges of integrating these roles. The framework is laid out in six actions:

1. Strengthening policy by advocating for including lived/living experience practitioners within national mental health policies and strategies, ensuring alignment with recovery-oriented principles;
2. Building capacity for organizational readiness by strengthening organizational systems and culture to support the effective integration of lived/living experience practitioners into multidisciplinary teams and broader mental health systems, ensuring alignment with recovery-oriented principles;
3. Promoting co-creation, collaboration and integration by embedding cocreation principles in designing, delivering and evaluating mental health services to ensure that lived/living experience and other forms of expertise inform systemic improvements;
4. Standardizing training and certification by co-creating and implementing standardized training and certification programmes for lived/living experience practitioners that ensure consistency, professionalism, fidelity to lived experience principles and recovery oriented practice;
5. Enhancing supervision and support by establishing reflective and strengths-based clinical/practice supervision models to provide lived/ living experience practitioners with the support to manage emotional challenges and navigate professional expectations, while maintaining best practice and fidelity to the principles of lived experience professional roles; 
6. Expanding access through accessible and digital tools by using digital platforms to expand the reach of lived/living experience practitioners, particularly in remote and underserved areas.

Additionally, in a recent call for action for children and youth mental health, WHO underlined that one in seven adolescents has a mental health condition. WHO advocates for a comprehensive response to the mental health needs of children and young people, with a focus on strengthening policies and legislation; promoting enabling environments (in homes, schools, communities, workplaces and digital spaces) and building preventive and care services. 

Moreover WHO notes that services need to be responsive to different levels of need, from prevention to recovery. Care services should be provided through both health (general and community health services) and non-health settings, like schools and youth centres. To make this happen, WHO highlights it is critical that system strengthening is supported by strong leadership and governance, solid coordination across sectors, sufficient financing, a skilled and diverse workforce, and robust health information systems. To that end, since 2022, WHO partners with UNICEF, governments, and local stakeholders to deliver a Joint Programme on Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing and Development of Children and Adolescents to strengthen country leadership and capacity to provide services for children and young people, and their caregivers.

More information about the launch of the Roadmap “Transforming mental health through lived experience” available here.

Roadmap “Transforming mental health through lived experience” available here.

WHO’s call for action on children and young people’s mental health available here.

More information on UNICEF and WHO Joint Programme on Mental Health and Psychosocial Well-being and Development of Children and Adolescents available here.