Following last year’s success, the WHO Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety in Athens, Greece, in collaboration with the WHO European Mental Health Flagship team, is organizing the 2nd WHO Autumn School on Quality of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Care. The event will take place in Athens on 3–7 November 2025.
This innovative course is co-created by policy-makers, academics, mental health professionals and young people. It aims to strengthen capacity and deepen expertise in delivering high-quality mental health services for children and adolescents across the WHO European Region.
Why focus on quality of child and adolescent mental health care?
Mental health challenges among children and adolescents are growing across the Region. One in 5 adolescents aged 15–19 lives with a mental health condition, and suicide is the leading cause of death among young people aged 15–29.
Many countries still face challenges in fully addressing these needs. Fewer than two thirds have dedicated mental health policies for children and adolescents, and available services often struggle with limited workforce capacity and resources. Without timely, high-quality care, young people face long-term impacts that extend to their families and communities.
Enhancing the quality of mental health services is essential, but barriers such as a lack of standardized quality indicators, insufficient training opportunities and a shortage of culturally appropriate care persist. While progress has been made globally through the development of quality frameworks, networks and tools, advances are often fragmented and limited to a handful of high-income settings.
The 2nd Autumn School aims to help bridge this gap.
About the Autumn School
The 2nd WHO Autumn School on Quality of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Care will bring together early-career professionals from ministries of health in Greece, neighbouring southern European countries and the Western Balkans.
Designed to strengthen practical skills and deepen understanding of how to improve mental health-care quality for children and adolescents, it will foster capacity-building through a dynamic mix of small-group, problem-based learning, real-world case studies, and peer-to-peer exchange. Participants will strengthen their ability to apply quality principles within everyday mental health-care delivery for children and adolescents.
Over 5 days, the programme will cover key dimensions of quality care. The first sessions will focus on core concepts and regional mental health data, followed by approaches to setting standards, improving clinical protocols and fostering continuous quality improvement. Later sessions will explore how to meaningfully engage young service users and measure what truly matters to them.
The final day will conclude with an interactive session where participants present context-specific applications of their learning, and the week will wrap up with a discussion of feedback, a certificate ceremony, and reflections on next steps and future opportunities.