Home / Special Initiatives / Global Mental Health Initiative
Our Mission
The Global Mental Health Initiative unites psychiatry, law, global health, and related disciplines to address urgent public mental health and human rights challenges. The focus of this initiative is to protect patients, strengthen health systems, and transform global mental health.
Guatemala Mental Health Law Project
Our team has collaborated with members of the Guatemalan Congress to draft and refine the first comprehensive mental health law, integrating feedback from medical and legal professionals affiliated with Stanford’s Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health program. The proposed changes to the law balance human rights with clinical safety by defining safeguards for the use of evidence-based crisis interventions, clarifying informed consent capacity, and preserving crisis hospital care to ensure safe, effective treatment.
This project is advancing on two specific areas of focus, legislative reform through Congress and regulatory and implementation planning with the Ministry of Health. We are supporting the Ministry of Health in responding to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Case 13.524), where Guatemala must demonstrate progress on deinstitutionalization and safeguards for human rights. Together, these efforts aim to shift Guatemala toward a rights-based model of care, addressing key human rights issues and creating a replicable model for mental health law and deinstitutionalization across Latin America. We recognize that other countries in the region have led mental health reform efforts for decades. Our goal is to learn from their experiences, integrate their lessons into Guatemala’s reform process, and establish collaborations that strengthen regional exchange and collective progress. Through this approach, we aim to contribute to the growing body of Latin American evidence on rights-based mental health systems.
Next Steps
Building from this foundation, we hope to establish a Global Mental Health Program that advances these principles internationally, fosters collaboration across regions with local institutions, and positions Stanford as a leader in evidence-driven, community-based mental health reform.
Initiative Leaders
Clinical Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Affiliate, Department Funds
Resident in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Collaborators
Adjunct Clinical Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Affiliate, Center for Human Rights and International Justice
Senior Program Manager; Director of Human Trafficking Research, Center for Human Rights and International Justice
Clinical Associate Professor, Emergency Medicine
Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Clinical Supervising Attorney and Lecturer in Law, Intl Human Rights Clinic
WSD-HANDA Professor of Human Rights and International Justice, Professor of Environmental Social Sciences and Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Learn More
For background information about related work, read “Student Leaders in Global Health: Gabriela Asturias” from Stanford’s Center for Innovation in Global Health.