Joint Action MENTOR

Mental health is a major public health issue in the EU European Union (European Union ), affecting economic and social well-being. Rising challenges contribute to morbidity and significant costs for social protection systems. The EU Joint Action MENTOR (Mental Health Together) aims to promote mental health by sharing experiences across political and clinical spheres. Our approach incorporates evidence based practices and adapts initiatives for sustainable mental well-being at personal and population levels.

Goals

  1. Support policy makers at national and regional levels in the design, implementation, and improvement of mental health in all policies approaches; 
  2. Promote mental health in communities with focus on vulnerable groups, and tackling stigma and discrimination associated with mental health problems and addiction by sharing good practices, methods and online tools;
  3. Empower people with lived experience (PLE) and their inclusion in mental health policy and services; 
  4. Provide care pathways to promote proactive and person-centered care for people with mental disorders through the Personal Health Budget;
  5. Prepare systems for monitoring mental health in the population, facilitating evaluation, and directing effective action and help to vulnerable groups.

Consortium

MENTOR brings together 43 partners from 20 countries. 

RIVM role

RIVM is the Netherlands’ Competent Authority in this Joint Action, teaming up with Trimbos (as Dutch affiliated entity. RIVM participates in both technical work packages of the Action. Within the scope of the work package on ‘Building bricks for integrated and comprehensive mental health and well-being actions’, RIVM is leading a task to develop a methodology to support implementation of mental health in all policy (MHIAP) approaches. This methodology is designed to support policy makers (at national and regional/local levels) to see the value of a MHIAP approach in their context and have the best available information and tools at hand to implement a MHIAP approach to take a comprehensive approach to addressing mental health (and its determinants) across domains within and beyond the health sector. Co-leader for this task is the Public Health Agency of Sweden. RIVM also participates in work on digital health promotion and guidelines for mental health promotion for municipalities, schools, and workplaces. This work is carried out as part of the technical work package on ‘Innovative Digital Solutions for Improving Mental Health across Europe'. In both work packages, RIVM closely collaborates with Trimbos.

RIVM colleagues involved are: Anne Havermans, Nicoline Tamsma, Manon Savelkoul, Jippe Miedema, Djoeke van Dale en Mirte Klomp.

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s 2023 EU4Health Work Programme under grant agreement No 101162928. Additional funding was provided by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.

EU flag and text co-funded by the European Union