Albania, North Macedonia, and Serbia have joined a programme run by WHO and UNICEF to improve mental health and psychosocial well-being and development among children and adolescents in the target countries by 2030. These are the first 3 countries in the WHO European Region to participate in the programme, which aims to build intersectoral collaboration and sustainable health system change. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Programme on Mental Health of Children and Adolescents also supports Bhutan, Colombia, Egypt, Guyana, Maldives, and Mozambique.
“We are very excited for this initiative for WHO and UNICEF to jointly work together to strengthen child and adolescent mental health support across these 3 countries,” says Dr Joao Breda, Head of the Athens Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety, which runs WHO/Europe’s regional programme on child and adolescent mental health.
Coordinating better mental health services
Representatives of WHO and UNICEF came together on 5 May to jointly launch the programme and share the specific actions each country will pursue. Increasing multisectoral collaboration, which is key to developing sustainable health system change, and strengthening community-based mental health support were in particular focus.
“The first thing we plan to do,” says Gazmend Bejtja, a public health officer at the WHO Country Office in Albania, “is to establish a functioning national multisectoral, multistakeholder coordinating mechanism in the government.”
“The collection and evaluation of good quality data can aid in such cross-sectoral coordination,” emphasizes Margarita Spasenovska from the WHO Country Office in North Macedonia. “It will feed the national action plan on mental health and adolescents that North Macedonia will be developing. We plan to involve youth, their parents and all other relevant sectors.”
“The ministries are ready to work on supporting child and adolescent mental health,” says Bojana Jevtovic from UNICEF in Serbia. She notes that ministries are aware of data showing that mental health problems are increasing among children and adolescents. “We want to use this as our window of opportunity.”
Sustainable change
Gabriele Fontana, Regional Advisor and regional focal point for the joint programme at UNICEF, expressed excitement for the opportunities offered by the joint programme. “We talk a lot about bringing mental health and psychosocial support into the community. But very often we lack concrete examples of good practices,” he says. “So, I really look forward to see how these countries will be using the opportunities on the ground to implement this support, which we can all learn from.”
Jen Hall, Technical Officer and regional focal point for the Joint Programme at WHO, emphasized that support for the 3 Western Balkan countries will be coordinated at the regional level through direct country support and further joint meetings to share challenges and learnings and provide a space for problem solving.
“It is so exciting to hear these plans come together,” says Cassie Redlich, a Technical Officer from the Mental Health Flagship. “They're so ambitious. They’re really looking at sustainable change at a systems level.”
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This article was amended on 20 June 2023: in the earlier version it mistakenly referred to Albania, instead of North Macedonia, in the quote by Margarita Spasenovska.