Chiara Servili and Ken Carswell of the World Health Organization (WHO) describe how the agency supports countries in strengthening youth mental health systems by improving access to care, integrating evidence-based interventions, and elevating youth-led innovations. Their work focuses on building intersectoral governance and accountability structures while ensuring that mental health programs are adapted to local contexts and implemented at the community level.

WHO’s work includes:

• Helping governments define responsibilities across health, education, and youth ministries, and promoting collaboration between national structures and grassroots, youth-led initiatives.
• Creating open-access, evidence-based tools such as Problem Management Plus and digital self-help programs that can be adapted to different populations and delivered by non-specialists.
• Ensuring interventions are locally relevant by using community input, local idioms, and cultural practices to improve acceptance and effectiveness.
• Organizing workshops with partners such as Orygen to train young people to advise governments on service design and advocate for mental health inclusion in national systems.
• Helping countries adapt evidence-based guidance to strengthen communication between adolescents and their caregivers.

Evidence from WHO’s pilot programs in countries such as Lebanon and Thailand has shown successful national implementation of digital interventions. Carswell notes that maintaining open-access resources allows governments and NGOs worldwide to freely adapt and scale these tools.

Both emphasize that effective implementation depends on intentional design and contextualization. Carswell highlights the importance of “creative and conceptual thinking” when fitting interventions to available resources and training capacity, while Servili underscores the value of identifying “context-specific catalytic opportunities” where even small investments can generate lasting systemic change.

Their current collaborations with UNESCO and UNICEF aim to align global guidance for schools and health systems, ensuring a unified framework for promoting youth mental health worldwide.