Accordingly, on March 5, 2026, the Department of Disease Prevention (Ministry of Health) posted a draft Circular detailing a number of articles of the Law on Disease Prevention to seek opinions from agencies, organizations, units and people on the Government and Ministry of Health Electronic Information Portal; including content on subjects and contents of supervision in prevention and control of mental disorders.
This is a new content stipulated in the Law on Disease Prevention, which is currently being discussed and contributed to by scientists and experts in the field of health.
Immediately after posting the draft to ask for opinions, the Department of Disease Prevention received some feedback from press agencies and people.
The Department has received the opinions and continues to work with specialized mental health units and relevant management agencies to finalize the draft.
The completion of the draft aims to build a guiding document for the Law on Disease Prevention that is feasible, suitable to practice, and does not create a burden in implementation; and at the same time build a set of tools to support medical facilities and people to self-assess risk factors, proactively prevent and reduce the risk of increasing mental disorders in the community.
The Department of Disease Prevention hopes to continue to receive comments from agencies, organizations, units and people on the draft guidelines for the Law on Disease Prevention as well as related professional documents to create social consensus and better protect people's health when implemented.
Previously, the Ministry of Health developed a draft circular detailing a number of articles of the Law on Disease Prevention, in which for the first time it proposed to include risk factors such as academic pressure, work pressure, prolonged stress,... in the monitoring area of mental disorder risk.
In item 2 of the draft, the subjects of supervision include three main groups. The first group is people with mental disorders, including common disorders such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, depression, anxiety disorders, dementia and other disorders according to the professional list.
The second group is deaths from mental disorders, identified according to international disease classification. This is a systematic monitoring of deaths where mental disorders are identified as the main cause, based on international diagnosis and disease codification standards, to serve public health work. From this monitoring, it is possible to know the mental disorders that are at risk of death, in order to soon have appropriate intervention measures.
The third group is people at risk of mental disorder. According to the definition in the draft, people at risk are people who have a history of mental disorder or have at least one risk factor in biology, psychology, society or other related factors.
