Rethinking Conflict Health Allocation: Reconstituting Mental Health Service Delivery in Yemen

Armed conflict and inequitable access to public services are increasingly understood as interconnected public health and policy challenges. Recent scholarship has argued that equitable allocation of services across rural and urban regions may reduce conflict risk by mitigating deprivation and group grievance. While this perspective advances conflict-sensitive public health policy, it leaves the place of mental health within allocation frameworks. This commentary extends that debate by arguing that mental health should be understood as a central, rather than peripheral, domain of conflict health allocation. Using Yemen as a critical case, the commentary highlights how protracted conflict exposes limitations in prevailing allocation models and demonstrates the need to move beyond geographic distribution toward a broader conception of mental health equity in conflict policy. It is argued that integrating mental health into allocation debates strengthens both distributive justice frameworks and public health approaches to conflict prevention and recovery.