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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

Scaling up access, strengthening systems: public health approaches to child and adolescent mental health in state and regional models

Scaling access, strengthening systems: public health approaches to child and adolescent mental health across statewide and regional models

Because traditional specialist-led models alone are insufficient, scalable and sustainable population-level public health strategies are needed to improve access to child and adolescent mental health care.

The symposium addresses the growing demand, workforce shortages, fragmented service delivery, and persistent inequities in access facing child and adolescent mental health systems worldwide. It argues that, as needs become more widespread and complex, traditional specialist-led models alone cannot meet population needs, and a robust public health response spanning primary, secondary, and tertiary levels is required. The session brings together speakers from the United States and Australia to examine how different health systems are responding to this shared public health challenge. Failure to close the gap between need and timely access has detrimental downstream effects on educational attainment, economic productivity, health trajectories, disease burden, and quality-adjusted life years. Proposed population-level strategies include statewide collaborative care programs, centralized referral pathways, workforce development pipelines, and structured partnerships with primary care and schools. The presentation also discusses the structural determinants of access—how governance design, funding mechanisms, and workforce strategy reinforce or eliminate inequities. The public health benefits of well-coordinated systems are clear: early identification reduces chronicity, integration with primary care lowers barriers for underserved groups, and cross-sector collaboration reduces the burden on acute and emergency services.

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