STANAG 2564
STANAG 2564 mental healthcare during deployment
Defence health services and organisations working to a contract or tasking that invokes STANAG 2564 or the AMedP-8.6 publication it covers
STANAG 2564 is NATO's ratification agreement committing member nations to implement AMedP-8.6, Edition C, the Allied Medical Publication on mental healthcare during deployment.
- Edition
- 3
- Published
- 2026-05-12
What it is
STANAG 2564 is the NATO Standardization Agreement covering mental healthcare during deployment. It is the ratification agreement for AMedP-8.6, Edition C, the Allied Medical Publication that carries the actual mental healthcare content. This is Edition 3, promulgated 12 May 2026, superseding Edition 2 of 31 October 2019.
A STANAG is not the specification
A STANAG is the agreement by which NATO nations commit to implement a standard, not the technical or clinical specification itself. STANAG 2564's own text is short and administrative: an aim, an agreement naming the publication it covers, a short list of implementation considerations, and the ratification and reporting machinery. The general principles of mental health support in the forward area of operations, and everything about how that support is actually delivered, are specified in a separate publication, AMedP-8.6 Edition C, which the STANAG names as the standard participating nations "agree to implement". Anyone working out what forward mental healthcare requires in practice needs AMedP-8.6's own text, not this cover agreement.
What it commits nations to
The stated aim is "to standardize for the NATO forces the general principles governing Mental Health (MH) support to the forward area of operations and to aid nations' interoperability". The agreement draws a boundary worth noting: "the medical management of specific disorders follows national guidelines and is not covered by this publication", while the principles of prevention, management and treatment of operational stress are what require the document, because they differ from other medical and surgical interventions. Implementation is to consider six areas the cover names: forward mental healthcare, psychological management of potentially traumatizing events, acute stress reaction and suicide prevention, operational capability, mental fitness of operations, and mental health professional operational capabilities.
Who it binds, and how
STANAG 2564 binds nations, not suppliers or individual care providers. It is effective "upon receipt for use by the participating nations and NATO bodies", and it becomes binding on a given nation through ratification, which NATO records in the NATO Standardization Documents Database (NSDD). Allies and NATO bodies "shall provide implementation details through the electronic reporting tool"; partner nations are only "invited to provide their implementation details" the same way. The document sets no NATO-wide start date: its own "NATO Effective Date (NED)" field reads "Not applicable", so whatever date matters comes from a nation's own implementation timetable or from a resulting contract or tasking.
How it's evaluated
STANAG 2564 describes no certification scheme and no audit. What it describes is nations reporting their ratification and implementation status to NATO for the record, and a review "in accordance with AAP-03" with the result recorded in the NSDD. Nobody is "STANAG 2564 certified", and the document never uses that language.
Standards it references
STANAG 2564 covers AMedP-8.6, the Allied Medical Publication that carries the actual mental healthcare content. Under "Other Related Documents" the cover names none besides it. Reviews of STANAG 2564 itself run under AAP-03.
How we help
STANAG 2564 is a ratification cover with nothing of its own to implement in a compliance platform. The mental healthcare content it points to lives in AMedP-8.6, and the work of forward mental health care delivery happens in operational and clinical practice, not in software.
What ComplyTrain does for that kind of work generally is give a defence health service one auditable place to hold the procedures it defines against a publication like AMedP-8.6, the training records for the people delivering that care, and the evidence trail - reviews, corrective actions, document control - that an internal review or a customer's quality representative would ask to see.
ComplyTrain does not deliver mental healthcare, decide how a service implements AMedP-8.6, or determine what a nation's forward mental health care programme should contain. That is clinical and operational work, carried out under national guidelines and the publication itself.
Which STANAGs and Allied Publications actually apply to a given deployment or contract is set by the tasking and the customer's quality clause, not by us. Browse the explorer to see what sits alongside STANAG 2564 and AMedP-8.6, and talk to us about the evidence trail once you know which ones are in your contract.
Questions
Is STANAG 2564 mandatory?
Only where a nation has ratified and implemented it, and it reaches a supplier or a care provider only where a contract or tasking invokes it. The STANAG's own "NATO Effective Date (NED)" field reads "Not applicable", so there is no blanket start date to point to.
What is the difference between STANAG 2564 and AMedP-8.6?
STANAG 2564 is the NATO ratification agreement; AMedP-8.6, Edition C is the Allied Medical Publication that actually specifies the mental healthcare content. Ratifying STANAG 2564 is how a nation commits to implement AMedP-8.6.
Can an organisation be certified to STANAG 2564?
No. STANAG 2564 describes nations ratifying and reporting implementation to NATO, recorded in the NATO Standardization Documents Database. It describes no certification or audit scheme for a supplier, a care provider, or a product.
What changed between Edition 2 and Edition 3 of STANAG 2564?
The document states that this edition supersedes "STANAG 2564, Edition 2, dated 31 October 2019", but it does not itself describe what changed between the two editions.
Does STANAG 2564 cover the clinical management of specific mental health conditions?
No. The agreement states plainly that "the medical management of specific disorders follows national guidelines and is not covered by this publication".