This conference, convened under the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, advances the Union’s commitment to strengthening mental health and psychosocial responses to current and future health threats.
Through high level policy dialogue and multi stakeholder collaboration, the conference will emphasise the importance and impact of the EU’s approach to integrating mental health into all policies. The conference aims to explore ways of strengthening Europe’s health security architecture by ensuring mental health remains integral to resilience, crisis preparedness and response, and to the management of cross border health threats.
The conference is grounded in the European Commission’s Communication on a Comprehensive Approach to Mental Health (2023) and is consistent with the EU’s “mental health in all policies” approach, it also aligns with the 2024 World Health Assembly resolution on Strengthening mental health and psychosocial support before, during and after armed conflicts, natural and human-caused disasters and health and other emergencies.
The conference will bring together key stakeholders at a time of EU-wide challenges in Europe. The Health security architecture of the EU has been substantially bolstered following the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in the face of new emerging crises, and, informed by additional learning from the response to COVID-19, there is a need to revisit the mental health and psychosocial aspects of our preparedness and response planning, to ensure Member States are best positioned to support the health and wellbeing of all citizens.
The programme addresses core preparedness and response challenges, including scalable psychosocial interventions, digital and community support mechanisms, workforce capacity, and disparities affecting vulnerable populations. These priorities reflect ongoing EU initiatives such as suicide prevention programmes, digital safety measures under the Digital Services Act, and EU funded psychosocial support for displaced and affected groups.
Key themes will include:
Integrating mental health considerations into all policy areas and emergency response frameworks
Scaling evidence based psychosocial and mental health interventions
Strengthening workforce and system capacity for multidisciplinary responses/lived experience/peer support digital, including leveraging digital, community, and workplace supports
Addressing inequalities and vulnerabilities that intensify during health threats