SAMA at the Karolinska Institutet – UNICEF Joint Conference on Global Child and Adolescent Mental Health

‘Bold ideas for brighter futures’

Stockholm, May 2024

Bold Ideas for brighter futures:

This conference jointly hosted by the Karolinska Institutet and UNICEF focused on child and adolescent mental health to identify ‘bold ideas for brighter futures’ for young people around the world. This conference aimed to bring together stakeholders and experts from around the world to facilitate discussions and share research. Topic covered included a range of mental health promotions, early interventions and preventions, the roles of schools, communities and families in supporting children’s mental health and responsible data collection and distribution. This saw fascinating presentations from a wide range of countries across multiple topics; from mental health for children in conflict to digital interventions for adolescent and child mental health.

Two researchers from Project SAMA were invited to give oral presentations on their SAMA; Professor Siobhan Hugh-Jones and Amy Palmer. This consisted of short talks given as part of small panels of researchers from similar topics, ending in an open audience question and answer session.

 Co-production and feasibility testing of a whole school programme for adolescent mental health in Indian secondary schools

Professor Siobhan Hugh-Jones

Professor Siobhan Hugh-Jones presented within the topic of ‘school based mental health promotion’ and gave an overview of Project SAMA, including the rationale of a whole school approach to adolescent mental health and Project SAMA’s 8 workpackages (find out more about the workpackages here). This included SAMA for Youth, SAMA for Teachers and SAMA with Parents.

Towards the Cultural validation of the RCADS-47 for use with adolescents in Karnataka, India

Amy Palmer

Amy Palmer presented on the ‘towards the cultural validation of the Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale for use with adolescent in Karnataka, India’. As research suggests that measures which have been culturally validated identify the constructs that they have been designed to more accurately, Project SAMA strove to culturally validate a popular measure of anxiety and depression to be used as an outcome measure for the SAMA interventions. This study used think aloud interviews to identify and rephrase any RCADS-47 items which proved to be difficult for young people in Karnataka to understand. The rephrased RCADS-47 was then psychometrically tested among Indian adolescents, establishing that it measures anxiety and depression well among this population. This amended measure was used in Project SAMA as an outcome measure.

Final reflections

Presenting Project SAMA work at this conference was both a privilege and inspiring. Although tackling the growing problem of mental health can often feel like a difficult task, to see so many diverse and passionate research projects was motivating. Alongside this, a large interest in Project SAMA was generated across researchers and stakeholders from our presentations at this conference. We would like to extend our thanks to the wider SAMA team for their contributions to the research in these presentations, alongside The Karolinska Institutet and UNICEF for hosting us at this conference.