Global Child and Adolescent Mental Health Conference

Political Economy of Adolescent Mental Health and Wellbeing
Poor mental health among children and adolescents remains a large and growing global problem, often leading to challenges across the life course. Despite the magnitude of the problem, aligned youth-centred multisector actions are rare. Investments in promotion, prevention, care and treatment across the mental health spectrum do not adequately address the main drivers of AMH or match the magnitude of the problem. We examine some of the factors shaping global priority of AMH, identifying some of the challenges and opportunities for transformative change.

Right to mental health: Challenges and opportunities for its full realization in childhood and adolescence
The presentation will elaborate on challenges and obstacles that impede  implementation of basic principles that are crucial for effective promotion of mental health and well-being in childhood and youth.

Main messages of the presentation:

• Policies and practices that promote mental health and support persons with mental health conditions need to fully embrace human rights based approach and to be evidence based.
• All forms of violence, discrimination and inequalities have negative impact to mental health. All stakeholders need to invest  in enabling, supportive, non-discriminatory and non-violent environments in all settings (family, educational institutions, community, workplace, healthcare and other services, society at large).  This is crucial for promotion of mental health, and to achieve this, policies and practices should be in line with  the CRC, CRPD and other international and regional treaties.  
• In reality, very often policies and practices divert  from principles based on  human rights and evidence. Thus they  may be not effective or even be detrimental to mental health and well-being. This happens when  human rights    and/or  evidence are ignored or applied in selective and biased ways. Examples will be provided, such as   overuse of biomedical paradigm in mental healthcare, pressure from some forces to „protect traditional family values“, policies based on „moral panic attacks“. These and other approaches, when they prevail in policies and practices, may do more harm than good, despite having good intentions.
• Social sciences  and qualitative research should not be undermined. Their role is increasing  with understanding that social determinants, with combination of risk and protective factors, are crucial for healthy holistic development of everyone. The role of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress in early childhood and the quality of relationships appears to be crucial for quality of health of a person through entire life span.

What is the essence?
In a very brief overview, this presentation will summarize the results and conclusions of the longitudinal prevalence, pathogenetic, outcome and intervention studies performed in the ESSENCE programme of research over the past 50 years. It is concluded that ESSENCE (Early Symptomatic Syndromes Eliciting Neurodevelopmental Clinical Examinations) – including ADHD, autism and learning/language problems - constitute not only the most important challenges for mental health in childhood but that ESSENCE, if unattended to, are among the most severe global public health problems across the life span.

Ref: www.gu.se/gnc

Education and Health from Early Years are Intertwined
The foundation of life, wellbeing and learning are laid already during the years before school, in the family and in Early Childhood Education. Not the least is this related to how we think about sustainability today, where the large question is changed from “What can education do for economy” towards “What does the World demand from education?

Education for sustainability must be transformed towards developing children who have agency and are interested in sustainability questions where mental health is one aspect. In ongoing research– and developmental programs we can see how young children become knowable and interested in sustainability questions, and also how staff and head-masters change preschools to be healthier in various ways. It however demand skilled teachers. Teachers with a belief in children’s capabilities and the understanding they create about themselves and the world around them.. Language become a key-question for mental health and education, a learning journey that has to begin in early years.   

Early and Coordinated Interventions: Addressing Youth Mental Health Challenges in Complex Systems
The healthcare system faces increasing challenges, such as changing demographics and resource scarcity, driving a need for transformative approaches that emphasize equality, accessibility, and patient involvement. A key aspect of this transformation is a stronger focus on preventive and health-promoting interventions, particularly for children and youth, who have seen a sharp rise in mental health issues in recent years.

This presentation will explore the concept of Early and Coordinated Interventions (TSI) for children and youth, emphasizing the importance of early detection and multi-sectoral collaboration between healthcare, schools, and social services. These interventions aim to create new structures within existing systems to better meet the needs of young individuals. The presentation will address the systemic challenges of implementing such interventions, including coordination across sectors and adapting existing organizational structures to support proactive, long-term mental health strategies. A better understanding of the conditions and systemic factors that influence the effectiveness of these interventions can provide insights into how support for young individuals can be enhanced within these complex systems.

Youth mental health: the role of preventive and digital early interventions
Supporting youth mental health and wellbeing is an imperative for mental health policies across the world. The early intervention paradigm has proven successful. The new challenge is to intervene even earlier, making preventive and wellbeing-focused interventions available in schools and communities. Key targets of preventive interventions for young people are loneliness and early detection of symptoms. School-based and digital interventions offer exciting new opportunities for:

• connecting people through dedicated school programmes and apps,
• offering support exactly when needed, with digital micro-interventions,
• facilitating early detection, through digital phenotyping,
• delivering highly scalable remote and AI-assisted psychosocial support tools.

In this presentation our work in developing screening programmes and interventions will be summarised for our workshop discussion.   

We will present a wide overview of Wellcome’s strategic programmes and discuss in detail our mental health strategy and how our funding is creating a step change in early intervention for anxiety, depression and psychosis (broadly defined).

We will additionally share information about our current and upcoming funding opportunities that are open to applications globally.

This will include information on our ‘Field Building’ function – supporting a field of mental health science that is collaborative, coherent, and focused - and our Lived Experience work.

As well as sharing our vision and work with you, there will also be an opportunity for rich discussion, and Q&A. 

About Wellcome
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to using science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone. We fund curiosity-driven research and are taking on three of the biggest health challenges facing humanity - climate change, infectious disease, and mental health.

Specifically, our Mental Health strategic programme looks to achieve a world in which no one is held back by mental health problems through creating a step change in early intervention for anxiety, depression and psychosis.

We aim to do this by funding research that improves our understanding of how biological, psychological, and social factors interact in the development and resolution of depression, anxiety, and psychosis – including OCD, PTSD, bipolar, and schizophrenia – as well as projects to find new and improved ways to predict, identify and intervene as early as possible. We have a commitment to embed collaboration with Lived Experience experts in the work we do, the work we fund and in the field of mental health science.

Wellcome aims to support a field of mental health science that is collaborative, coherent, and focused – shaped in collaboration with lived experience experts. Our Mental Health field building function supports participation and diverse perspectives within mental health science, fosters working across traditional disciplinary, institutional, and ideological siloes, and identifies collective research priorities that will meaningfully move the field forward.

For more information about Wellcome’s mental health work please visit our website at Mental health | What we do | Wellcome.