Mental Health Strategic Plan 2019-2023

Objectives

The Philippine National Mental Health Strategic Plan 2019–2023 seeks mental health and wellbeing for all Filipinos by valuing, promoting and protecting the right to mental health, providing comprehensive, integrated, accessible and quality programmes and services, and enabling people affected by mental health conditions to exercise their full human rights.[1]Its three goals are to promote and protect mental health and wellbeing; identify, treat and prevent mental health conditions; and secure the rights of affected people.[2]

• Strengthen mental health promotion, literacy, self-care, help-seeking, humane attitudes, stigma reduction and rights awareness across the life course in communities, health facilities, schools and workplaces.[3][4]
• Develop a rights-based, culturally responsive and recovery-oriented national system covering promotion, prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, aftercare, social reintegration and support for psychiatric, neurological and psychosocial needs.[5][6]
• Integrate mental health into basic health services and establish a balanced network of community-, primary-, secondary- and tertiary-level care, including deinstitutionalised alternatives and referral pathways.[7][8]
• Protect service users from discrimination, coercion, cruel or degrading treatment and inappropriate restrictive interventions, while supporting informed consent, advance directives, confidentiality, legal capacity and participation in treatment and recovery planning.[9][10]
• Improve leadership, governance, service access, workforce capacity, information systems, evidence and research through four pillars covering promotion, governance, services, and information and research.[11]
• Address suicide prevention and response, substance use, disaster-related mental health and psychosocial support, support for carers, and equitable access for geographically isolated, disadvantaged and vulnerable populations.[12][13]
• Increase government mental health expenditure as a share of total government health expenditure from 2.75% in 2020 to 5.00% in 2023, while seeking mental health benefit packages through the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation.[14][15]

Implementation

Implementation combines whole-of-government and whole-of-society coordination with phased development of systems and capacity, reflecting available resources.[16][17]The Philippine Council for Mental Health, attached to the Department of Health, provides policy-making, planning, coordination and advisory leadership, oversees implementation of the Mental Health Act, and develops and periodically updates the multisectoral strategic plan.[18]

• Coordinate national agencies, local government units, civil society organisations, service users, families and carers, professional bodies, academic institutions, private providers and international partners through a multi-agency and multisector mechanism, including regional and local mental health councils.[19][20]
• Maintain a Department of Health Mental Health Division within the Disease Prevention and Control Bureau to manage the National Mental Health Programme and serve as the Council secretariat, with qualified specialists, support staff and separate programme-management functions.[21]
• Develop community-based services through a stepped-care model linking community, primary, secondary and tertiary facilities, public and private providers, schools, workplaces, social welfare settings, custodial facilities and provider networks.[7][12]
• Establish or upgrade local facilities according to population need, including community mental health centres, outpatient centres, halfway houses, crisis centres and drop-in centres, with appropriate staff, trained barangay health workers, equipment, supplies and medicines.[22]
• Build workforce capacity through curricula, training, mentoring, supervision and career-development measures for mental health professionals, primary-care workers, barangay health workers, volunteers and non-specialist personnel.[7][23]
• Mainstream mental health in educational institutions, workplaces and local development plans through policies on non-discrimination, wellness, identification, referral, crisis management, suicide prevention, provider requirements and monitoring.[24][25]
• Provide psychosocial support, psychological first aid and continuity of care during armed conflict, disasters and other emergencies, while prepositioning medicines and ensuring accessibility for persons with disabilities.[7][26]
• Develop national communication, public-awareness and media-reporting initiatives involving educators, social workers, faith-based organisations, people with lived experience, families, artists, media organisations and cultural leaders.[4][27]
• Implement suicide-prevention policies, 24-hour crisis hotlines, emergency referral processes, responder training and surveillance of suicidal ideation, attempted suicide and mortality.[28][29]
• Require internal review boards in public and private health facilities to review, monitor and audit treatment, restraint and confinement; inspect facilities; investigate disputes and complaints; and recommend remedial or legal action for rights violations.[30][31]
• Collect quarterly local service reports and integrate mental health data into the national health information system, using registries, routine reporting, community surveillance and a central research repository.[32][33]
• Monitor progress through scorecards, annual agency and local-government reporting, facility assessments, surveys, administrative data, mortality statistics and periodic epidemiological studies.[2][34]A midterm review was scheduled for 2022, followed by planning for 2024–2028 in 2023.[15]
• Finance implementation through Department of Health and other mandated-agency appropriations based on the Council’s strategic plan, reflected in the National Expenditure Program and General Appropriations Bill; initial costs were charged to 2018 Department of Health operating, capital-outlay and strategic-planning appropriations.[35][36]

Monitoring & Evaluation

The framework combines plan-level performance monitoring with routine service reporting, research, surveillance and rights-based oversight. It requires a balanced scorecard with indicators, monitoring of implementation of the Mental Health Act and Strategic Plan, mid-term assessment, and evaluation of intervention impacts against statutory objectives.[20]

• Monitor progress towards the three strategic goals through indicators covering promotion, service use, suicide mortality, human rights and governance.[17][2]
• Track suicide mortality, with a reduction target from 3.20 per 100,000 population in 2020 to 3.10 in 2023, and collect service-use data annually.[3]
• Measure service use among people with mental disorders or epilepsy, with planned increases of 2% in 2020, 4% in 2021, 6% in 2022 and 8% in 2023.[3]
• Track implementation across schools, higher and vocational education, government agencies, private companies and local governments, including targets for compliant public schools, monitored education institutions, inspected companies and local mental health ordinances.[24]
• Monitor the proportion of municipalities and cities providing mental health services and routinely reporting data to the Philippine Council for Mental Health, with targets rising from 15% in 2020 to 60% in 2023.[15][33]
• Collect service statistics through community-based care procedures, including follow-up within one month after inpatient discharge, primary-care use disaggregated by age, sex, diagnosis or presenting concern, and suicide surveillance including suicidal ideation.[12]
• Integrate mental health data from government and non-health systems into the national health information system, establish data-flow protocols and reporting guidance, and build a central research repository.[33][37][38]
• Generate updated epidemiological and prevalence data across the life-course, conduct national studies at intervals set by the Council, and implement a research agenda with at least one study per region by 2023.[39][23][40]
• Require local government health offices to submit quarterly reports through the Department of Health, covering service-user numbers, conditions or disabilities, treatment duration and outcomes, and demographic and socioeconomic information while protecting confidentiality.[32][22]
• Use agency scorecards, local health scorecards and the Seal of Good Local Governance to support accountability for local mental health programmes.[14][15]
• Conduct biennial Mental Health Summits, undertake a midterm review in 2022, and prepare the 2024–2028 strategic plan in 2023.[15]
• Maintain rights-based accountability through internal review boards, which review, monitor and audit treatment, confinement and restraint; inspect facilities; investigate complaints; and may recommend administrative, civil or criminal proceedings.[41][30]
• Review involuntary treatment or restraint within 15 days of an order and every 15 days while it continues, with documentation and regular external independent monitoring, review and audit.[32][10]
• Enable complaints, inspections and investigations by the Commission on Human Rights, Department of Justice and Department of Health concerning abuse, impropriety, involuntary treatment and rights violations.[42][43]

Indicator definitions, baselines, reporting templates and evaluation methods are specified for some strategic-plan measures, but several extracts do not provide a complete national reporting schedule, consolidated indicator set, surveillance protocol or performance thresholds.[3][2][44]

Costing & Financing

Financing is intended to be embedded in national and local planning, with allocations linked to the Council’s strategic plan, annual agency budgets and the National Expenditure Program. Initial implementation is charged to Department of Health appropriations for National Mental Health Programme operating costs, psychiatric-facility capital outlays, personnel services in selected Department of Health hospitals and strategic-plan formulation.[21]

• Increase government mental health financing as a share of total government health expenditure from 2.75% in 2020 to 5.00% in 2023.[14]
• Fund outpatient and inpatient mental health benefit packages through the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, propose programme-convergence budgeting, monitor General Appropriations Act appropriations and engage development partners.[15]
• Require local government units to make appropriations for sustainable local mental health services, while national government provides additional funding and assistance for local hospitals and health facilities.[13]
• Fund establishment and operational assistance for community-based mental health care facilities according to population need through the national government and Department of Health.[32][22]
• Maintain an adequate yearly budget for the Department of Health Mental Health Division and reflect succeeding-year allocations for mandated agencies in the National Expenditure Program.[35][36]
• Include mental health budget allocation in guidelines for health facilities, educational institutions, workplaces and communities.[11][3]
• Support communication, media, training, suicide prevention, information-system and research activities through specified budget requirements, with identified sources including the Department of Health, health-promotion resources, donors, civil society organisations and partners for selected promotion activities.[45][46][27][26][40]

Recorded allocations include mental health medicines and programme funding in 2020 and 2021, while the source also lists activity-level budget requirements for promotion, research, information systems and service initiatives.[47][26][48][40][49]Several budget figures do not specify a currency, and the extracts generally do not provide a consolidated multi-year budget, detailed funding gap, costing methodology or economic assumptions.[50][37][51]