Political priority for global mental health: old challenges, new opportunities

COVID-19 has exacerbated mental health needs worldwide at an unprecedented scale, yet global mental health continues to attract limited political attention. Prioritization over the next decade will depend on the capacity of the policy community to harness political support. A new publication from the London School of Economics and Political Science presents novel analyses on factors that have shaped the generation of political priority for global mental health over the past three decades preceding the COVID-19 pandemic (1990–2020) and their changes over time, and identifies challenges and opportunities to inform discussion on the prioritization of global mental health over the next decade post-COVID-19. The results point to three technical and four political challenges that advocates need to address to increase political support over the next decade, and opportunities they might leverage. This visual blog provides a snapshot of the study, and it is also available as an infographic.