Mental health is a fundamental human right, enshrined in international agreements including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet despite decades of global commitments, mental health remains one of the most neglected areas of public health. More than one billion people live with a mental disorder, while vast disparities in access, quality, and equity persist across countries and communities. This presentation will explore how global mental health reform can more fully realise the right to mental health care by addressing structural barriers, strengthening community‑based systems, and ensuring that reforms are grounded in principles of dignity, inclusion, and human rights.

Drawing on practical experience from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Special Initiative for Mental Health, this presentation will examine why treatment gaps remain so wide and how political leadership and innovative policy, financing, and workforce development shape the availability and quality of care. Case examples from WHO’s work and countries undertaking large‑scale reform will illustrate both the challenges and opportunities for transforming mental health systems. The importance of expanding psychosocial interventions will be highlighted as well as needs to strengthen primary and secondary health care to ensure mental health systems provide both clinical services as well as social supports (housing, employment, education, legal assistance) that enable people to live with dignity. It will also explore how global guidance, open‑access tools and research, and community‑driven integration of care across health systems is helping countries move towards more holistic, equitable and rights‑based systems.

Meaningful reform requires a whole‑of‑society effort, from Australia to New Zealand, and across the globe. Realising the right to mental health for all is achievable, but only through sustained global collaboration, investment, and a commitment to leaving no one behind.

Three Key Learnings:
1. Appreciating that the right to mental health is universal but can only be realised with system‑level reforms

2. WHO approaches to community‑based, rights‑aligned systems to deliver better access, quality, and dignity for people living with mental, neurological and substance use conditions, particularly in low-resource settings

3. The ways global collaboration and open‑access approaches can accelerate progress, and practical considerations for everyone to contribute to increasing access to mental health services for all