New alliance promotes children's mental health
Partnership for Children (PFC) is involved in launching a new international alliance to promote the mental health of children and young people in schools.Intercamhs - the International Alliance for Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Schools - aims to bring together experience and expertise from all over the world and has already attracted more than 250 members from 23 countries. PFC Director Chris Bale recently attended its first conference in Portland, Oregon - and returned full of enthusiasm.
'Sometimes, we struggle to be heard,' he said. 'At educational conferences, we have to keep pushing mental health promotion onto the agenda, and then at mental health conferences we have to keep pushing for the interests of children to be considered. We seem to be on the outside, trying to get in.
'But the Intercamhs meeting was different. Everyone there was concerned about children's mental health and what we can do to promote it in schools. We all spoke the same language. For PFC, it was the right place to be.'
Presentations at the conference ranged from a campaign to raise awareness of mental health in Iceland, to a programme for adolescents in New Zealand.
'There was a lot of interest in Zippy's Friends because, unlike most other programmes, this one has been designed from Day 1 to be international. A number of people were surprised that a programme which is effective in Denmark can also work in India,' said Chris.
Resources for mental health promotion are scarce in almost every country, and delegates discussed how to attract more money. Some felt it was vital to demonstrate the economic benefits of mental health promotion - the bottom line is that healthy students do better academically. But others were uneasy about this link, feeling that good mental health is a justifiable goal in itself.
Similarly, there were conflicting views on the very term 'mental health'. Some delegates warned that it alarmed parents and suggested instead talking about emotional wellbeing. However, others said it was important to refer openly to mental health, in order to de-stigmatize it.
'One of the best learning points for me was simply to see how many programmes and services there are for children and young people around the world,' said Chris. 'We need to get much better at sharing information, so that a teacher who needs a particular type of resource can find it quickly and easily.'
That is one of the main goals of the Intercamhs website, which has just been launched under PFC's management. PFC's Brenda Suen designed both the site and the Intercamhs logo.
'The site is very small at the moment,' she said, 'but we hope that over the next year or two it will become the best international online resource of its kind.'
The Portland conference was organised by the Center for School Mental Health Assistance at the University of Maryland, which has been the prime mover in establishing Intercamhs. Funding was provided by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or SAMHSA. The next Intercamhs conference is scheduled to take place in Auckland, New Zealand in September 2004, immediately before theThird World Conference on the Promotion of Mental Health and Prevention of Mental and Behavioural Disorders.
> Visit the Intercamhs website