Towards a system that strengthens before it treats.

The Mental Health Alliance started 2025/2026 as a nationwide, evidence-based and practice-oriented learning alliance of diverse stakeholders. It addresses the challenge that support systems today focus too little on health promotion and prevention. Additionally, approaches today are often designed and implemented in siloed areas of responsibility. For long-term structural change, they must work together more effectively.

The aim is to highlight good practices, systematize experiences, and translate them into transferable models for sustainable support systems so that young people can grow up healthy and their mental wellbeing is strengthened.

The long-term vision is a society in which mental wellbeing and thriving are the norm: children, young people, and adults have positive relationship experiences and access to support and structures that promote mental health early, low-threshold, and effectively. Mental health is understood as part of social progress (“Mental Health in All Policies”).

Until the next legislative period in 2029, focus lays on designing a tiered model that anchors health promotion, prevention, early intervention, and care in all areas of life, integrates services and funding streams better, and views mental health as a societal good. This requires a shift in thinking: from a deficit logic (“treating illness”) to a resource logic (“promoting and maintaining health”).

Key Facts:

* Duration: 2025-2026

* Location: Germany