Mental Health: Youth in Transition

Sponsor(s): National Institute of Mental Health

For Mental Health Awareness Week, NIMH partnered with the Embassy of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to host a panel discussion about mental health challenges faced by youth—including indigenous peoples—during the transition to adulthood.

Experts from the United States included NIMH Clinical Director, Maryland Pao, M.D., and Dr. Richard McKeon, Chief, Suicide Prevention Branch, U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Canadian expert panelists included Dr. Susan Chatwood, Scientific and Executive Director, Institute of Circumpolar Health Research, and Dr. Ashok Malla, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Early Psychosis and Early Intervention in Youth Mental Health, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University.

NIMH Director Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. provided a welcome and opening remarks for the event. The roundtable conversation, meant to elicit the audience’s views, examined current research-based evidence on best options to improve youth mental health. Discussions placed special emphasis on creating reliable access to services, better integration of care, and strengthened suicide prevention efforts. Speakers also sought to identify pragmatic, feasible steps, that could be taken by researchers, care providers, and policy-makers, to enhance the promise of healthy transitions by youth to adulthood.