Mental Health Matters: How can the 2025 UN High-Level Meeting prioritise serious mental health conditions in an ageing world?

Date: Tuesday 24 September 2024
Time: 8:30am – 10:30am EDT
Location: The Yale Club of New York City

At this event, ILC-UK hosted a breakfast solutions workshop alongside the UNGA meeting in New York. During this event, we discussed the challenges associated with acute mental health globally, and in the US. We  identified policy opportunities to improve the prevention, management and treatment of acute mental health conditions.

As part of our Mental health matters programme, ILC is undertaking a global project that aims to generate a debate among key policy and health stakeholders on how we can forge stronger policies to address and reduce the impact of acute mental health conditions across the life course.

During this event, we discussed:

  • Given the focus on NCDs and mental health at next year’s UN High-Level Meetings, what actions do we need to ensure serious mental health issues are prioritised in line with the burden of disease?
  • How can we ensure diagnosis, treatment and access to mental healthcare meets changing needs across our longer lives?
  • How can we capture the social and economic challenges associated with major depressive disorder, schizophrenia and PTSD across our longer lives?
  • What can we do to inform and support low- and middle-income countries in developing and improving their serious mental health policies?

Keynote speakers for this event included:

  • Dr Omnia El Omrani, Policy Fellow at Imperial College London & COP28 Health Envoy and COP27 President First Youth Envoy

Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) has provided financial support to ILC to conduct this event and project. ILC has retained editorial control of all written outputs.