Changing the direction of young people's mental health
Our work and vision for improving mental health and wellbeing
October 2024
The need for action
Good mental health is essential for personal wellbeing, community resilience, and socio-economic progress. Mental ill health can affect a person’s education, employment, relationships and life outcomes. Globally, 12 billion days are lost each year to mental ill-health, and the rates of mental illness are rising faster among children and young people than among adults.
The good news is that over the last 20 years, research has uncovered significant insights into the social, psychological and biological factors contributing to mental health conditions such as depression. However, despite these advances, mental ill-health continues to rise across society.
The barriers to progress
Research alone is not enough. Significant obstacles remain in translating scientific breakthroughs into practical, widely used solutions. We still face challenges in innovating and implementing effective, evidence-based approaches for preventing, detecting, diagnosing, managing and treating mental health conditions.
Our priorities moving forward
Building on the progress detailed in Changing the Direction, YPMH’s priorities are to:
- Work with partners across the mental health ecosystem to innovate and implement scalable interventions that improve prevention, early detection, diagnosis, and personalised management and treatment for mental health conditions in young people.
- Provide accessible, evidence-based information and education to individuals and organisations working to reduce mental health challenges. Initially, we have focused on depression. Going forward, we are focusing on the broader range of conditions that can lead to depressed mood.
- Accelerate the translation of research into practical solutions through YPMH’s Understand : Innovate : Implement approach, enabling promising innovations to be applied at scale.
How you can get involved
Whether you’re an individual or part of an organisation, there are many ways you can help us make a difference to young people’s mental health:
- Use our resources to improve mental health strategies, whether you’re a parent, educator or health professional, and help prevent, detect and manage conditions such as depression.
- Collaborate with us to help ensure mental health innovations are effective, practical and beneficial to those who need them.
- Support YPMH’s work by making a donation, joining a fundraising effort, providing in-kind support, or spreading the word.
To learn more about YPMH’s approach and how you can get involved, download Changing the Direction of Young People’s Mental Health today.
Get involved
YPMH is seeking collaborators help help develop, fund and deliver both individual innovations and coordinated portfolios of projects across educational institutions, health and social care, mental health support charities, employers and custodial settings. Together we can turn research into scalable, practical solutions that improve prevention, early detection, diagnosis and personalised care for young people’s mental health.
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