FundaMentalSDG

​FundaMentalSDG is a global initiative aiming to strengthen mental health in United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We are committed to the belief that there can be no health without mental health, and that there can be no substantial development without a focus on mental health in the Development Agenda 2030.

​​Video: No longer can we look away, by Robin Hammond.

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​Mental Health in the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations included Mental Health in the SDGs! Now the UN member states need to show their commitment to the SDGs and mental health.
The United Nations have adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015 in New York. The Agenda 2030 is an ambitious document, featuring 17 new sustainable development goals and 169 targets, which will define global development from 2015 to 2030. For the first time, the UN have included mental health! 
Mental health is included in the SDG 'Declaration' 
  • Paragraph 7: In these Goals and targets, we are setting out a supremely ambitious and transformational vision. We envisage a world [...] A world with equitable and universal access to quality education at all levels, to health care and social protection, where physical, mental and social well-being are assured.
  • Paragraph 26: To promote physical and mental health and well-being, and to extend life expectancy for all, we must achieve universal health coverage and access to quality health care. [...] We are committed to the prevention and treatment of NCDs, including behavioural, developmental and neurological disorders, which constitute a major challenge for sustainable development.
Mental health is included in the SDG Health Goal 3 in three Targets 
  • 3.4: By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being
  • 3.5: Strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol
  • 3.8: Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all 
This translates into words to include mental health explicitly within universal health coverage, in line with what WHO and FundaMentalSDG have argued for. Together with other NGOs and international organisations, FundaMentalSDG has contributed to strengthening mental health on the global development agenda. Thank you all for your support!
See the final outcome document Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Mental health Indicators
The UN have adopted mental health indicators: 
  • Indicator 3.4.2  Suicide mortality rate 
  • Indicator 3.5.2  Harmful use of alcohol, defined according to the national context as alcohol per capita consumption (aged 15 years and older) within a calendar year in litres of pure alcohol

But no indicator for severe mental disorders! 
Severe mental disorders are not included in the SDG indicators so far. FundaMentalSDG calls for inclusion of severe mental disorders in the SDG indicators and proposes to include an additional indicator:
  • Indicator: Proportion of persons with a severe mental disorder (psychosis, bipolar affective disorder, or moderate-severe depression) who are using services.
Watch video: Urge the UN for strong mental health indicators.
​Click to read more.  ​
'The truth is, of course, it is not lack of medical knowledge that is at the heart of the world’s collective failure to tackle depression. After all, there is an increasing understanding both of the condition and of how it can be treated. Our difficulties rest more on a lack of political resolve. There has been a failure to acknowledge the scale of the problem and to put in place the policies and resources to overcome it.' - Kofi Annan (full speech)

Strengthening mental health in the SDGs

Breaking the Chains
The Indonesian government is committed to eradicating the practice of pasung, physically restraining people with a mental illness. The confronting new documentary "Breaking the Chains" by Erminia Colucci explores pasung and the efforts of social activists to stop it.
Typhoon Haiyan leaves mentally ill caged and alone 
This film by Simon Rawles and Vishva Samani, shows the situation of mentally ill people, shackled in cages by their families in the Philippines. The people were discovered by local organisations searching for vulnerable survivors in the aftermath of typhoon Haiyan. 
Copyright © 2014 by #FundaMentalSDG, represented by the #FundaMentalSDG Steering Group, e-mail: fundamentalsdg[at]gmail.com