Launched on World Mental Health Day 2024, the new World Health Organization (WHO) Mosaic toolkit was developed by WHO, researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London and experts by experience from the Global Mental Health Peer Network.
The Mosaic toolkit draws on the best-available evidence on how to end stigma and discrimination in mental health.
Stigma and discrimination related to mental health conditions are widespread and harmful. They can exacerbate the challenges faced by people living with mental health conditions, making them less likely to seek treatment for their condition, less likely to continue with treatment, and find it harder to hold down employment and form relationships.
The Mosaic toolkit demonstrates why it is important to end stigma and discrimination and sets out practical steps to achieve this.
I am hugely proud of the WHO Mosaic toolkit, which represents the culmination of many years of dedicated work. We want this toolkit to empower and inspire action, through providing essential resources and strategies to individuals, organisations and governments on how to run evidence-based anti-stigma interventions in their local contexts. One principle we emphasise for any anti-stigma activities is that they should be led and co-produced with people with lived experience of mental health conditions. This toolkit was created following this principle, with colleagues from the Global Mental Health Peer Network providing invaluable insights as a part of the core writing team.
Dr Petra Gronholm, Research Fellow at King's IoPPN, Assistant Professor in Global Mental Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and one of the lead writers of the toolkit
The Mosaic toolkit puts into practice one of the recommendations of the 2022 Lancet Commission on Ending Stigma and Discrimination, co-chaired by Sir Graham Thornicroft, Emeritus Professor of Community Mental Health at the IoPPN and Charlene Sunkel, founder of the Global Mental Health Peer Network.
It is designed for everyone who wants to be involved in anti-stigma work, aiming to demystify the process of reducing stigma and discrimination. It aims to make it easier for individuals and organisations who have not yet undertaken evidence-based anti-stigma activities to begin that process in their context.
People who have engaged in anti-stigma work in the past will also find it useful as a reference when advocating buy-in from stakeholders, and to promote the adoption of evidence-based stigma-reduction principles and to put these into practice.
This powerful consortium of King's, WHO and the Global Mental Health Peer Network has created a pragmatic guide on how to reduce stigma worldwide. The core message is clear: strong evidence shows that we can reduce and end stigma using methods based on the principle of social contact. This means creating occasions where people with lived experience of mental health conditions have contact with people who do not. This can either be direct, in-person contact, or remote, digital or online contact. This evidence-based approach leads directly to the conclusion that people with mental health conditions are the central, active change agents to end stigma for good.
Professor Sir Graham Thornicroft, Emeritus Professor of Community Mental Health at King's IoPPN and one of the lead writers of the toolkit
The Mosaic toolkit also received inputs from the Pan-European Mental Health Coalition and anti-stigma experts worldwide.
