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European Mental Health Week 2025

Introduction

Mental health is a fundamental pillar of wellbeing, yet across Europe, the true scope of mental health needs and the effectiveness of national responses remain poorly understood. One key reason is the persistent lack of comprehensive, comparable, and up-to-date data. Without this evidence, it is difficult to identify gaps, hold systems accountable, or make informed decisions that improve outcomes for individuals and communities.

Too often, mental health is shaped by invisible forces, poverty, unemployment, inequality, and insufficient investment in services, but the data to expose these links is limited or inaccessible. Mental health remains underfunded in many countries, and people with lived experience continue to face stigma, delayed care, and systemic neglect. By making mental health data visible, this project aims to support transparency, improve policy responses, and ensure that mental health is recognised and protected as a core social right.

To address this, GAMIAN-Europe launched a new initiative during EU Mental Health Week 2025: the development of two interconnected dashboards, designed to bring clarity to Europe’s mental health landscape and empower stakeholders to act. Accompanied by a high-level webinar, this project brings data to the forefront of rights-based mental health advocacy.

At the heart of the initiative are three dashboards, designed for ongoing updates and usability by researchers, policymakers, civil society, and the general public:

Mental Health Prevalence: This dashboard presents key indicators such as the prevalence of various mental health conditions, self-reported mental health status.
Stigma Dashboard: Levels of perceived stigma, disaggregated by age, gender, and country, with historical trends where available.
Mental Health Policy and Investment Dashboard: This second dashboard tracks national policy actions, including levels of government investment in mental health, the integration of services into primary care, availability of mental health professionals, and workforce capacity.

The dashboards draw from trusted sources including the Global Burden of Disease study (GBD), Eurostat, WHO, and OECD. They are designed to be intuitive, filterable, and openly accessible.

The Launch Event – A Webinar for Change

To mark the launch, GAMIAN-Europe hosted the webinar Making Mental Health Visible: Data as a Tool for Rights. The event gathered patient advocates, data experts, and mental health professionals to explore how data can support more just, inclusive, and effective mental health systems. Speakers emphasised that without better data, we cannot accurately identify unmet needs, evaluate progress, or ensure accountability. The webinar also reinforced the message that data is not just a technical tool—but a human rights imperative.

These dashboards offer a starting point. The data reveals a fragmented and uneven picture, highlighting the urgent need for investment in mental health monitoring, data harmonisation, and transparent reporting. Going forward, GAMIAN-Europe will continue to update the dashboards and advocate for better mental health data across the EU, working with national partners and institutions to drive change.

Watch the webinar

Explore the dashboards

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