Looking Ahead to the SNF Global Center’s Second Annual Global Summit on Youth Mental Health

By Emma Beckwith, 2026 Youth Mental Health Academy Intern, Child Mind Institute

As mental health care, education, and research for youth advances, it is important to remember that in order to best serve young people, we must listen to their lived experience. They know better than anyone what conversations and changes need to happen to improve child and adolescent mental health care around the world. Therefore, they must be included in this discussion as co-creators and leaders of transformation.

Building on the momentum of last year’s inaugural Global Summit on Youth Mental Health, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute will host the second edition of the annual event on September 21-24 in New York City.

Led by the SNF Global Center’s Global Youth Advisory Council (GYAC), the event is set to unite young people from around the world to discuss the issues impacting their mental health. Additionally, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers will participate in various sessions. The hope is that youth and adult experts can work together to enact necessary changes in child and adolescent mental health care.

The GYAC, consisting of members from the Global Center’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Initiatives (CAMHI) in Greece, Brazil, and South Africa, took on a leading role in organizing the summit. In every step of the process, they have had input on what they want the summit to look like, new features they want to include, the key topics that will be discussed, as well as the theme for this year’s summit: “Redefining Mental Health Care: Youth Perspectives in a Changing World.” They will also serve as moderators of discussion panels, with each GYAC member leading conversations on topics they feel passionate about.

The youth are the present and future and deserve to be the lead contributors in this work. This year, the summit aims to center their voices through three thematic sessions:

• “Meeting Young People Where They Are” will examine how to make school systems safer places for identity expression and mental health education. And they’ll discuss how to make digital spaces safer, including ways to communicate the impact online spaces have on mental wellness to young people.
• “What Young People Care About” will consist of breakout sessions where, in small groups, young people will discuss the modern youth experience in how topics such as climate change, economic instability, and political polarization affect their mental health.
• “Setting Young People Up for the Future” will include a Q&A with experts where youth can learn how to take care of their mental wellness in a changing world.

During last year’s summit, young participants came together to document key takeaways and actionable items for implementation and global change through a published youth-led report. This year, the goal is to increase youth involvement even more, with more youth attendees, speakers, and leaders. After all, this event isn’t just for the betterment of youth and adolescent mental health, but a space for people around the world who have a shared passion and care about this issue to connect and unify in order to enact positive change.

As a young person myself, what I would like to see come out of this year’s summit is action. The event is already an amazing starting point, where both young people and adults have shown their care for improving child and adolescent mental health. Now, we need to take actionable steps to implement the changes needed as voiced by youth, so that the talk doesn’t just stay within the event but becomes a reality. While there is no doubt that it will take time, I have hope that with the continuation of these annual summits, more global experts, changemakers, policymakers, clinicians, researchers, and caretakers will take what they’ve learned into their spaces of work to enact real change.

As Nelly Serdari, a member of the Youth Engagement Scheme (YES) with CAMHI in Greece, stated at last year’s summit, “The only way that we can try to break down barriers is if older generations try to get on our level.”

Now, it is up to the adults to break down the barriers that we youth cannot.

Learn more about the inaugural Global Summit on Youth Mental Heath

Learn more about the Youth Mental Health Academy at the Child Mind Institute