Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change
World Mental Health Day is an opportunity to meaningfully engage with people with lived experience (PWLE) of mental health conditions and to recognize their knowledge as a vital form of expertise. This year’s campaign calls for their voices to shape the policies, services and decisions that affect their lives.
Lived experience is what someone has experienced themselves, especially when it gives the individual knowledge or understanding that people who have only heard or learnt about such experiences do not have.
Too often, PWLE are asked to share their stories but excluded from decisions. Meaningful engagement extends beyond simply being heard.
It means creating opportunities for people to influence decisions, co-design services, strengthen peer-led approaches, challenge stigma and strengthen accountability. When PWLE are meaningfully engaged, mental health systems are likely to become more person-centred, rights-based and responsive to people’s needs and concerns.
One important priority for PWLE is the shift away from long-stay psychiatric institutions towards community-based, person-centered mental health care. Institutions tend to be isolating and are too often associated with poor-quality care, coercion and human rights abuses. Deinstitutionalization requires a carefully planned shift in funding, services and support so that people can live in their communities. Reflecting this priority, WHO will launch practical guidance on deinstitutionalization.
On this World Mental Health Day, let us move from listening to action – and build mental health systems with PWLE, not merely for them.
Learn more – World Mental Health Day 2026