Systems Change: Constructing an Adolescent Public Mental Health Model

This chapter addresses the rationale or why systems change for adolescent mental health (AMH) is needed. The intent of this chapter is not to elaborate or reformulate the adolescent mental health problem or to design new programmatic interventions. Rather, the purpose is to shift the lens away from defining the problem and instead focus on providing a framework for possible solutions, whose components are already working somewhat interdependently and are in existence around the world. In this chapter, we provide a brief overview about why current approaches to AMH remain a challenge. Despite global and US declarations and calls to action, the AMH crisis continues to be intractable. Based on the interconnections of three core systems, including the AMH system, along with the public health and school health systems, a call for systems change along with five principles, integrated into a new adolescent public mental health (APMH) model, is proposed.