Rethinking psychosocial rehabilitation in mental health

Summary points Psychosocial rehabilitation is central to recovery-oriented mental health care, yet its uptake remains uneven because of persistent conceptual, methodological, organisational, and implementation barriers. Greater conceptual clarity is needed through stakeholder dialogue to establish a common set of core principles that can be adapted across diverse cultural and health system contexts. Meaningful co-creation with people with lived experience and their families should be embedded throughout the research and implementation cycle, from priority setting and intervention design to evaluation, scale-up, and dissemination. Evidence synthesis should adopt component-based and mechanism-informed approaches to identify the active components of psychosocial rehabilitation interventions and the mechanisms through which they produce change. Psychosocial rehabilitation should be recognised as a core component of mental healthcare, integrated from first contact and delivered across the continuum of care.