The Importance of Mental Health Awareness for Youth

Together, we connected more than 900,000 young people to adult mentors and coaches to respond to mental health needs. The idea is to educate more trusted adults to recognize the signs if a young person is suffering from mental health challenges and connect them to support. Our new mobile app makes it even easier to stay in touch with your care team and your mental health. It is common for youth (and adults) to be embarrassed by mental health challenges.

For Young People

Mental health professionals note that in many African countries, stigma, low awareness and limited access to youth-friendly support services mean that emotional and psychological struggles often go unnoticed or untreated. The session on mental health crisis management was both timely and relevant, addressing the growing need for empathy, awareness, and support systems among young people. We’d love to have you join us celebrate the week each year, build further understanding and raise vital funds for children and young people’s mental health. The idea behind doing this is to raise awareness about the mental health of children and young people.

Find trusted groups ready to support your mental health journey. Find support options, understand Military child well-being toolkit resources your rights, and take steps toward better mental health. Improving the mental and brain health of children and adolescents Guidelines on promotive and preventative mental health interventions for adolescents

It’s Children’s Mental Health Week 2026!

These fundamental components of health care have not received the same recognition, urgency for deployment, and investment in mental health (288–290). While there has been a real, yet modest and piecemeal, expansion of treatment availability and uptake for some young people, thanks to model innovation, the prevalence and impact of mental health conditions have not decreased in almost 25 years and are rising among young people (14). Group-based psychosocial interventions for children and adolescents exposed to traumatic events in humanitarian settings have been found to be effective in low- and middle-income countries. This has now expanded to include transdiagnostic platforms of care, which address various mental health conditions within a unified framework (13). This approach aims to address mental health issues early and effectively, leveraging the strengths of both primary care and specialized mental health services. Early intervention is considered a “best buy” in healthcare due to its cost-effectiveness and the substantial evidence supporting its benefits (274).

• For Mental Health Awareness Month, we want to share with you what we’ve learned in the past two years about youth and mental health.
• A balanced approach that integrates universal, selective, and indicated prevention research and interventions is essential for addressing the mental, physical and social needs of young people (277).
• This gap in data also applies to evidence regarding the time trends of several youth mental health disorders, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and eating disorders, which tend to be absent from many of the surveys of mental health.
• The likelihood of encountering protective or harmful social determinants is influenced by the distribution of money, power, and resources at global, national, and local levels, shaped by policy choices (86).

Children and young people supporting the week From downloading a resource and holding an assembly, to organising a fundraiser and spreading the word, your support helped raise vital funds for children and young people. We believe that children should not have to face mental health problems alone. The theme for Children’s Mental Health Week 2026 is ‘This is My Place’, and our aim is to support the systems around children and young people to help them feel they belong. The increasing evidence of deteriorating mental health among young people highlights a significant global public health crisis. Future research should aim to address these gaps to provide a more comprehensive understanding of mental health trends.

“Horizon likes to encourage our community to lock and talk, which means to lock firearms and medications and talk about mental health and suicide openly within the family,” Smith said. Horizon hopes to help mitigate some of those risk factors from guns and drugs in mental health incidents. The theme for 2025 was Know Yourself, Grow Yourself, with the aim to equip and empower children and young people across the UK to embrace self-awareness and explore what it means to them. Children’s Mental Health Week is observed in February each year, organised by place2be to highlight the rising mental health issue in children. No prior mental health experience is needed – just your motivation and commitment to youth work!