Adolescent Public Mental Health: Why Systems Need Changing and How a Public Mental Health Approach Can Work

This book presents an innovative public mental health model addressing the global crisis of declining mental health among adolescents. Despite the scholarly and public media attention given to post-pandemic adolescent mental health, few published sources present a sustainable, scalable and multisector collaborative solution that includes attention to the social determinants of health, equity, and prevention, together with mental health literacy education and early intervention. This book takes a public health approach to address this need and is inspired by the authors' experience creating and implementing change in adolescent mental health systems.

While prevention, together with diagnosis and treatment, are the most effective ways to address mental illness, a systems-level approach has only recently appeared in the applied mental health scientific literature. Unlike cardiovascular disease and cancer, mental health promotion and mental illness prevention have been slow to gain traction in the U.S. However, leading professional associations are beginning to acknowledge the value of a public health approach to adolescent mental health and the need to support public health and mental health intersectoral policies. 

The concepts presented in this volume draw on three primary systems: public health, mental health and education. The authors present 24 recommendations that are relevant for scholars, practitioners and leaders involved in adolescent mental health. Among the topics covered:

• U.S. and global adolescent mental health, public health, and school mental health
• Why a systems change is needed in adolescent mental health
• How to implement an adolescent public mental health model
• Taking action with systems change

Adolescent Public Mental Health is essential reading for professionals in mental health, public health, social work, and medicine who are interested in moving to a more integrative, multisectoral approach to adolescent mental health. Educators and academic institutions who teach our future leaders will benefit from understanding the new model, which can be seamlessly included in secondary school education. Clinicians, practitioners, school principals and superintendents can adopt the model and collaborative processes, described in the demonstration project, to respond to the mental health challenges they encounter every day.