Reimagining pathways for youth mental health

In July 2026, I had the opportunity to join a convening hosted by the International Health Charity Association (IHCA) in Geneva, bringing together researchers, practitioners, policymakers and organisations working to rethink how mental health support can reach children and young people beyond traditional clinical settings.

The convening, Beyond Institutions: Rebuilding Pathways for Child & Adolescent Mental Health in Low-Resource Settings, brought together experiences from across different contexts, including India, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Latin America and China. A common theme across the discussions was the need to move beyond specialist services and build mental health support into the places and communities where young people already live, learn and connect.

I presented work from Sangath’s Youth Mental Health Group under the theme “Beyond Services: Designing Entry Points for Youth Mental Health in Low-Resource Settings.” I shared three examples from India spanning schools, universities and digital spaces: the PRIDE school mental health programme, METROPOLIS and its peer-led Saathi Support programme for university students, and It’s Ok To Talk, our youth mental health storytelling platform.

For me, Saathi Support provided an important example of what this shift can look like in universities. University students often turn to friends and peers before seeking professional help. Saathi Support builds on this reality by training students—Saathis, meaning friends or companions—to provide structured, evidence-informed support to their peers. The programme uses approaches including behavioural activation, problem-solving and study-skills support, delivered flexibly in person or online. METROPOLIS is currently evaluating this peer-led model through a large randomised controlled trial with university students in New Delhi. While we are still learning about its effectiveness, the programme raises an important question for mental health systems everywhere: what if peers are not simply part of a young person’s support network, but are supported to become part of the mental health system itself?

Across the three examples, I also highlighted the importance of young people with lived experience as partners in research and intervention development, not simply as participants or beneficiaries, but as co-designers, peer supporters, researchers and storytellers.

The convening was a valuable opportunity to share what we are learning from India while also listening to approaches being developed elsewhere. These are not finished solutions, and they cannot simply be transferred from one setting to another. But they offer models and principles that can be adapted to different contexts, and reinforce the idea that expanding youth mental health care means creating more accessible, trusted entry points into support, wherever young people already are.