Protecting youth mental health, protecting our future
Authors: Helen Christensen, Charles F. Reynolds, Pim Cuijpers
Journal: World Psychiatry (2017)

Youth mental health disorders cause immense disease burden and high mortality. Finding an effective response to this challenge is now more pressing than ever, because "the largest generation of young people in human history is coming of age"1. The urgency and importance of the issue has alerted many political leaders, researchers and others2, 3. However, despite these calls for action, very little has happened. Yet, to many of us working in this area, the barriers to the implementation of an effective strategy do not seem insurmountable. The key barriers to early identification and prevention are known4, and include low rates of help seeking, the limited capacity of existing services to respond, and the fact that health systems are not suited to young people's needs. These barriers have been overcome for other illnesses, such as cancer and HIV. Yet, not so for depression in youth. So, the question is: why this lack of action? We suggest two explanations. The first is that the misconceptions and falsehoods around the nature of youth depression accumulate to form the idea that mental health disorders are "too hard" or that we know too little. The second is the lack of an actionable, prioritized, implementable blueprint supported by governments around the world. Depression is wrongly conceptualized by many as a "first world problem", that is more prevalent in more affluent countries, and is secondary to more important physical or communicable diseases that are higher contributors to mortality. In reality, however, depression is the third leading cause of disability for 15-24 year olds globally after skin and subcutaneous diseases, and low back and neck pain5, and in many high-income countries, suicide is the leading cause of death for 15-29 year olds6. It is true that in less affluent countries depression can be seen as a proportionally less significant problem, because death from other causes, such as infectious diseases, is higher. However, death from these causes is decreasing, and non-communicable diseases are on a rising trajectory. Moreover, depression is pervasive in its effects on all aspects of the person's life: work productivity as well as other means of contributing to and benefiting from the social, political and other aspects of community. This is particularly true for young people who are the world's future. A second misconception is that depression is not a "real" medical disorder. This is demonstrated by the fact that many people believe that treatment of depression is via "social support", connectivity, or the use of vitamins. When depression is not seen as a "real" disorder, stigma and discrimination will thrive. As to intervention, many believe wrongly that there are no effective treatments for depression, so seeking help will be of limited value, and that prevention of depression is not possible, even though a meta-analysis found that the number needed to treat to prevent one case of depression, using currently available interventions, was 227. This is staggeringly high compared to statins, that have to be taken by 60 people for one cardiac incident to be averted, or aspirin, that has to be taken by 1,667. A number of significant plans have been put forward to address youth depression, but these rarely get "air play". Most existing blueprints consistently recommend three actions. School programs should be implemented for all school aged children, including digital prevention programs for depression as well as drug and alcohol abuse, the re-introduction of physical activity, mental health literacy, and stigma reduction programs, and screening programs for severe depression and suicide ideation. Currently, countries rarely implement evidence based programs in schools; there is no central regulation or guidance, leading to one-off, fragmented approaches. The second is to improve treatment, through better service models, which will vary as a function of country. In the US, integration of mental health services into primary/paediatric care may be preferred by patients, because of stigma and convenience, and there is a clear need for realistic payment models for mental health services. Cost effective e-health services are underutilized in most countries. The third action is to develop an agenda to bridge knowledge gaps through targeted and large scale research. The key topics for this agenda include the risk and protective factors for mental disorders, developing better and more cost-effective treatments and prevention, and building precision medicine by investing in better prediction tools and by exploiting technology. The racial and ethnic diversity of youth engenders the need to develop models of depression from other than perspectives of white people, in order to engage youth and their families. Despite the need, current funding for mental health research is woefully disproportionate to disease burden worldwide. Youth don't vote. They often don't have a voice and depend upon others to champion their right to health justice. The growing prevalence of youth mental health problems is a tsunami, and parents, the community and governments float in a small boat, named "denial", on the quiet sea. Helen Christensen1, Charles F. Reynolds 3rd2, Pim Cuijpers3 1Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Randwick, NSW, Australia; 2Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; 3Department of Clinical, Neuro and Developmental Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands