Youth Mental Health: A Global Gathering

Turning the Tide: Creating a global blueprint for prevention and integrated care in youth mental health, was the theme of the recent International Conference on Youth Mental Health (IAYMH). Convening around 950 delegates from 48 countries in Vancouver, Canada, people came together to discuss efforts, challenges and successes toward youth mental wellness. 

Representing the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice (Global Alliance) and our Safe and Humane Schools (SHS) Task Force, as its chair was a highlight. In this capacity, I presented, What’s Next? Exploring Pathways for Implementing a Whole-Community Approach Toward Youth Well-Being by Supporting our Schools. In each of the three table top sessions, I shared a brief introduction to the recent work of the taskforce, A blueprint toward youth mental wellness: A whole-community approach to supporting our schools, followed by delegates discussing their experience and reflections on how it could be applied in their own communities. The Blueprint is a principle-based, flexible model developed for communities and their stakeholders to adapt and implement according to their self-identified needs, strengths and resources. Unique in its approach,  the Blueprint identifies  traditional and non-traditional stakeholders that exist in every community and presents the foundation for shared responsibility by all community members to support schools as hubs for youth well-being.  The human-rights framing of our work recognizes mental health along the continuum from promotion and prevention through to recovery, providing myriad opportunities for community engagement and ownership.  At IAYMH, participants appreciated the action-oriented work, which included a checklist, with prompts for considerations to implement the principle-based model within their own settings.  Check out the full article.

Plenary speaker, Nancy L. Young shared her experience and expertise about community relationships and their importance in research, in her presentation, Leveraging Technology to Engage Indigenous Youth, Gather Data, and Promote Strengths-Based Conversations.  With the goal of inspiring new ideas that promote youth wellness, her personal journey of respectful collaboration across cultures and the co-creation of a wellness measure, was a highlight of the conference and greatly welcomed and appreciated.  The intention of helping the individual, and community by generating appropriate data that further guides local health planning, is both powerful and innovative.  AAniish Naa Gegii: the Children’s Health and Well-being Measure (ACHWM) is a self-reported wellness assessment tool, created with and for First Nation, Inuit and Metis children and youth (8-18 years old). The tool generates information for each community that is locally controlled and governed by an app licenses and data stewardship agreement.  Notably, the measure  gives data back in a meaningful way to youth (in the form of a balanced chart), local health workers (with brief assessments to assist in their efforts) and decision makers (with aggregated reports that can be used to inform relevant policies and programmes).  The development of a young person’s wellness measure that centers the individual and their community, from the perspectives of youth, is critical to improving outcomes for the population.  It provides an example with guidance for all communities recognizing that measures such as this one, have the potential to positively impact individuals, families and their communities when developed collaboratively and from a youth-centered framework .  Learn more about the community resources and research.

Hearing about the current Canadian model for Integrated Youth Services , a popular and dynamic movement that aims to build effective, youth-focused and integrated services to address mental health, substance use and related concerns among youth aged 12-25 years, was also an innovative highlight.  Canada is among the global leaders in implementation and Foundry was the provincial leader in adopting this model approximately a decade ago.   Sessions throughout the conference shared experience on their evidence-based and evidence-generating practices, as well as how the services develop equity-and engagement-centered integrated infrastructure and platforms  to improve outcomes for youth, by meeting youth where they are.

Key Reflections from IAYMH 2025:

• Discussions about mental health continue to remain largely focussed on medical standards and interventions, leaving dialogue on the full mental health continuum (from prevention and promotion through to recovery) as unique.  To move toward effective strategies that include promotion and prevention, a focus on connection and other community- related approaches must become more widely prioritized.  For over a decade discussions on community strengths and resilience have been occurring and yet, they largely remain outside of the mainstream discussions surrounding youth mental health.
• Gatherings, such as this conference have so much potential to bring people together.  And yet, during  my informal networking opportunities with fellow participants, common echoes of the academic dominance at the conference were shared.  Conference organizers released data that 29% of delegates were under 30, an important accomplishment.  Yet, this also highlights a missed opportunity to have more (and younger) youth in this space.  A lesson learned for all future conference organizers, is to consider how to further develop their gathering(s) by pushing boundaries, building broader networks, inspiring individuals and communities with varied experience and catalyzing action together.  

So what’s next for the Global Alliance?

• The SHS Task Force, is in the process of developing infographics to disseminate our work,  A blueprint toward youth mental wellness: A whole-community approach to supporting our schools.
• The Global Alliance will continue its efforts to center mental health and well-being within and across all sectors and settings, through embedding human rights and their principles in our scope of work informing policy, practice and research.
• The Global Alliance is continuing to develop programming that fosters opportunities for members to come together for action.