Impact of Health-in-All-Policies and implications for mental health - a systematic review

Mental health and well-being is increasingly recognized as one of our times most important public health challenge.

Mental ill health make out a substantial part of the burden of disease worldwide, particularly in high-income countries. The costs of mental illness are vast and include profound individual suffering, economic and societal losses.

Sweden, a high-income country, and social welfare state with a generally good-performing healthcare system is not immune to the growing burden of mental ill-health.

Good governance and comprehensive mental health policies can mitigate mental illness´s high social and individual costs.

In 2020, the Swedish government instructed the National Board of Health and Welfare and the Swedish Public Health Agency to lead the work on submitting evidence for a new national strategy on mental health and suicide prevention in close collaboration with 24 other national agencies,The current movement towards a more concerted and collaborative approach to mental health and well being governing is framed along the lines of a logic similar to Health in All Policies, a term coined in 2006.

The HiAP approach emphasized inter sectoral collaboration and emphasized that policymaking for could benefit from more of a joint effort across sectors.

Given the resemblense, it appears relevant to explore the existing evidence from implementation of HiAP to better understand how a comprehensive mental health policies can contribute to improved multisectoral collaboration for mental health and well-being.

Consequently, this work will address the following question; what has been the effect of health in all policies on better collaboration among welfare actors and improved health outcomes?

To answer this question, we will conduct a systematic review of the published and grey literature from 2006, when the concept of health in all policies was coined, to 2023.