Mental health is a right

IT IS GOOD that the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) used the days after World Mental Health Day to sit scientists, lawyers, and policymakers at one table. The BAR Series on 12 October asked a plain question: how does a healthy brain protect a person’s ability to decide, to claim rights, and to take part in society?

Few agencies ask it; fewer still follow with work.

The CHR’s record under Republic Act No. 11036, the Mental Health Act, is well documented. It monitors the law’s implementation. It inspects mental health facilities. It sits in the Philippine Council for Mental Health. With the Department of Health (DOH), it supports the Mental Health Internal Review Boards, which give service users a remedy when their rights are violated. Its Handbook on the Right to Mental Health puts those rights in language an ordinary family can read.

That is the unglamorous part of human rights work, and it deserves credit.

The forum also feeds a concrete product, a CHR advisory on Brain Health in All Policies. Commissioner Maria Amifaith Fider-Reyes, the CHR’s focal commissioner for the right to mental health, opened the session. Dr. Darwin Dasig, Dr. Jean Marie Ahorro, and Dr. Leonor Cabral-Lim of the UP Philippine General Hospital brought the science. An advisory built on that mix can guide agencies that do not yet think of brain health as their business.

Government has moved as well. PhilHealth has offered an outpatient mental health package since October 2023, with up to PHP 9,000 a year for general services and PHP 16,000 for specialty care under Circular 2023-0018. The DOH runs a free medicines program. The Department of Education (DepEd) has a school-based program, and the Civil Service Commission cleared 10,000 School Counselor Associate posts on 1 July 2026. Congress set aside about PHP 2.9 billion for it in the 2026 budget.

In short, the foundation is there. The CHR is right to say it must now be made to reach people.

Here are the facts that explain why:

-The DOH has trained 3,000 doctors in the World Health Organization’s mhGAP program. Only 100 are accredited by PhilHealth, according to PhilHealth’s own appeal in November 2025.

-The Philippine Psychiatric Association counts 651 psychiatrists. The World Health Organization recommends 10 per 100,000 people.

-DepEd reports 2,093 guidance counselors for more than 28 million learners. Its own ideal is one for every 250.

-The country produces about 300 qualified counselors a year. The new posts number 10,000.

These numbers are not an indictment of the CHR. They show why its call for trained personnel, essential medicines, and reliable referral systems is the right one.

The CHR also names stigma and discrimination as barriers, and rightly so. A family that hides a relative’s depression will not seek a PhilHealth benefit, however generous. Rights education, the kind the CHR delivers through its handbook and trainings, is what makes the benefit usable.

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Iloilo shows both the promise and the distance.

On 30 September, Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. said the province is working to accredit rural health units to offer the national outpatient package. The Program for Resilience of Iloilo in Mind and Emotion, or PRIME, began in 2020 and was institutionalized by Executive Order No. 911 in 2026. A MentalHealthPH official told this newspaper that health workers remain too few for the number of people who need them.

That is the gap the CHR describes when it points to unequal access and geographic barriers. Communities far from a city hospital need the clinic to come to them.

The CHR asks for the same support in schools, workplaces, and disaster response. That list is practical. A typhoon season leaves behind more than damaged roofs, and a learner in distress should find a trained adult before a crisis, not after.

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The CHR also insists that persons with lived experience help write the policy. This is the strongest part of its message. Services designed without the people who use them tend to fail the people who use them.

So here is what we ask of those who can act.

Congress should fund mental health as a line item, not an afterthought. The DOH and PhilHealth should accredit the doctors they have already trained. DepEd and the Commission on Higher Education should build the pipeline for counselors. Local governments should follow Iloilo’s lead, and then go further.

The CHR has opened the door. Now the rest of government must walk through.

Awareness was the first step. Funded care is the next.