Welcome to the 22nd WCP Congress Program Scheduling

As young people navigate their life journeys, they encounter crucial transition points where some paths lead to flourishing, and other paths lead to crisis, mental ill-health, and other negative outcomes. Addressing the rising burden of mental ill-health and driving critical progress around the inner, social, and environmental dimensions that shape young people’s lives has the potential to create fundamental changes to improve the well-being of youth across the world. Leveraging approaches and frameworks from the consumer marketing field, citiesRISE, in partnership with Wellcome Trust, and along with research partners in India, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa, has spearheaded an innovative research project to generate novel insights into young people’s journeys accessing different sources of mental health information and support. The unique role of youth researchers (including youth with lived experiences) in shaping the research process has enhanced this project, resulting in models that have the potential to seed a highly impactful new body of research and amplify the impacts of mental health science on the lives of millions of young people. This session will explore how different actors and channels young people engage with shape their experiences of and with mental health science, and how these vary across dimensions like gender, age, education status, and more. Furthermore, the session will explore how engaging young people as active collaborators in the research process can enrich research and action toward improving youth mental health, and create a shared space for young people to bridge the gap between theory, practice, and lived experiences.