Background and purpose of the call:
Mental health problems affect about 84 million people across the EU. This is more than one in every six citizens. The total costs of mental ill-health are estimated at more than 4% of GDP (more than EUR 600 billion) across the 27 EU Member States. Out of this, EUR 190 billion reflects direct spending on health care, EUR 170 billion is spent on social security programmes, and EUR 240 billion represents indirect costs to the labour market due to lower employment and productivity. In a dedicated chapter, the Health at A Glance: Europe 2018 report[1] stressed the need to improve and promote mental health, concluding, inter alia, that mental ill-health leads to lives lived less fully and to lives lost prematurely.
The Commission has undertaken and supported many actions on mental health over the past fifteen years. Taking the European Framework for Action on Mental Health and Wellbeing[2] (as the main outcome document of the EU Joint Action on Mental Health and Well-Being[3]) forward, the Commission created the EU Compass for Mental Health[4] to support implementation resulting in -for instance- good practice exchange and capacity building. The Compass' practices
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