Integrating into the key touch points of a young person’s life – such as early childhood development, education, family systems, and recreation – will be pivotal to improving the way we recognize and respond to mental health challenges occurring early in life. The young people and youth leadership program is a collaborative model that can be used to promote mental health or deliver care and support.

Young people are disproportionately affected by mental health issues, making early intervention critical. In practice this means significant and concerted effort to work with, and for, young people. Moving the emphasis of services ‘upstream’ towards younger people enables the potentially lifelong debilitating effects of mental health problems to be addressed early. The ultimate goal of this pillar is to contribute to global learning on priorities for young people’s mental health and the measurable leverage points that offer most potential for positive change.