You Can’t Manage What You Do Not Measure - Why Adolescent Mental Health Monitoring Matters

Cultural and contextual adaptation of mental health measures in Kenya: An adolescent-centered transcultural adaptation of measures study

“…In addition, the culture of our youth, clinicians, and the service system also impacts outcomes and uptake of these measures [ 41 ]. In a recently published article presenting the impetus to the measurement of mental health among adolescents at the population level initiative, it was argued that ‘you can’t manage what you do not measure’ in the context of adolescent mental health [ 34 ]. How measurement is contextualized both developmentally and culturally is a critical consideration in understanding adolescent and youth mental health needs in diverse cultural contexts.…”

“…FGDs followed this, then CIs, while adopting any suggested changes in the wording of the tools. Finally, a back-translation was done to check whether the tools retained their initial meaning [ 32 – 34 ].…”

Critical life course interventions for children and adolescents to promote mental health

“…Investing in accurate measurement of child and adolescent mental health is essential to understand the burden of poor mental health, to ensure early detection and treatment, and to prioritise relevant services and programmes to improve child and adolescent mental health in meaningful ways (Hayes, Carvajal et al 2021). Despite the importance of mental health, measurement efforts for children and adolescents are complicated by several factors, necessitating thoughtful planning and flexible measurement approaches, including cultural adaptation of the tools used for data collection with this group.…”

“…School climate interventions may reduce depressive symptoms (Singla, Shinde et al 2021), decrease suicidality (La Salle, Wang et al 2017) and enhance resilience (Riekie, Aldridge et al 2017)-suggesting that positively altering school environments can have significant outcomes. Beyond these immediate environments, there is a need for sustained engagement at country level to unlock multi-level advocacy and funding-all of which have the capacity to advance youth mental health initiatives (Hayes, Carvajal et al 2021).…”

The Measurement of Mental Health Problems Among Adolescents and Young Adults Throughout the World

“…El Omrani [14], supported by Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General at the World Health Organization, and UNICEF's Executive Director Henrietta Fore, proposed three calls for action in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) give young people a place at the decision-making table for global, regional, and national response efforts; (2) implement actions that destigmatize adolescent mental health; and (3) increase investments in mental health services and data-collection mechanisms that capture youth perspectives. The final commentary, by Hayes and colleagues [15], highlights the findings from a convening of mental health leaders by the World Economic Forum, Global Future Council, which called for increased investment in adolescent mental health given that adolescence is the peak age of onset of most mental health conditions.…”