India has three policies which address adolescent mental health (two national, one state).  

The National Adolescent Health Program (2014) has mental health promotion as one of its priorities, whilst the National Mental Health Policy (2014) only recommends training teachers to ‘spot signs’ of mental illness. The State policy focuses on counselling and signposting.  

Despite policy recognition of school culture and stress as major concerns, policies have yet to act on evidence for whole school approaches for adolescent mental health. 

 In Year 2 of Project SAMA, we aim to:   

1. Understand facilitators, barriers, and solutions to policy uptake of the evidence on school mental health (in Karnataka). 

2. Identify ways of increasing young people’s participation in policy processes.  

3. Identify potential for application of solutions to other states.   

Watch our animation explaining the the role of evidence in developing policies for adolescent mental health: