Global Mental Health Action Network Statement for the United Nations Multistakeholder Hearing on NCDs, by Muskan Lamba

"My sincere greetings to everyone in this room!

My name is Muskan Lamba, and I’m representing the Global Mental Health Action Network today as a youth representative. I come from Delhi, India, where summer temperatures are already approaching 50 degrees Celsius. This matters deeply to any conversation on NCDs and mental health, because heat stress is unjustly felt across low and middle income countries, and is increasingly a driver of both physical and psychological harm.

Mental health is not a silo — it intersects with climate, poverty, gender, education. In 2025, it is not radical but necessary to say: Mental health is the thread running through all SDGs, and whichever goals may come next.

In my community, it’s no surprise to hear of at least one person in every family living with a non-communicable disease or mental health condition—or having lost someone to one. In my case, it’s been three of my grandparents to cancer; a beloved uncle and my 20 y/o friend Sam, to suicide. It’s the grief, the love, and the meaning of these losses that bring me here today to speak about mental health.

The lack of global solidarity around mental distress, despite it being a major cross-border reality, is heavy. I’ve worked closely with young people experiencing climate anxiety, displacement, discrimination, burnout, loss, helplessness and grief, quietly, and often alone, because in many parts of South Asia, mental health is still either a luxury or a shame. But what I’ve learned is that people are not broken, systems are.
 

India has the world’s largest youth population and one of the highest suicide rates. accounting for 40% of global suicides among women and a quarter among men globally.

A child or young adult in my country grows up with layered insecurities: climate chaos, joblessness, digital overwhelm, and unspoken generational pain. Yet 83% of those needing mental health support don’t receive it. We have just 0.3 psychiatrists per 100,000 people—and even fewer community-based services.

And while statistics help us understand scale, mental health is also about dignity—about every person’s right to live, to be heard, and to heal.  I deeply believe that the world is a sum of how the majority of people feel and operate. If so many young people around the world are more lost than ever, it’s a deep crisis, for the present and future.

I’ve seen what happens when mental health is embedded in schools, peer groups, care circles, open dialogue spaces—young people begin to heal together. But we cannot keep depending on unpaid labour and underfunded networks to carry this work. 

Mental illness costs the global economy over 1 trillion USD each year in lost productivity, yet there evidence every $1 invested in mental health yields a $5–6 return in improved health and productivity. 

Mental health must then be seen not as charity but as infrastructure, a human gift and resource.

So today, I urge Member States to:

• Decriminalize suicide and reform services by transitioning from institutional models to rights-based, community-rooted, culturally inspired mental health care

   

• Integrate preventative mental health across systems

   

• Invest in the mental health workforce, including, importantly, peer supporters, youth and caregivers! 

   

• Strengthen data, accountability, and lived experience leadership, importantly in low and middle income countries and the Global Majority.

   

• Ensure sustainable financing for integrated mental health services within universal health coverage

   

We’ve waited long enough for mental health to matter. I hope September’s High Level Meeting is a turning point where we stop just promising care and start practicing it.