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Youth Mental Health Day 2025 at PLOS Mental Health: The Importance of Sharing Support

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Jill Wellington from Pixabay

The theme for Youth Mental Health Day this year is ‘share support’. With this theme, we are encouraged to help young people and those around them to connect with others, share their stories, and to access evidence-based mental health resources. 

When talking about the sharing of support, we cannot overlook the power of community, peers and the lived experiences that they bring. Community and peer support offer opportunities for connection and shared healing. They have ripple effects that reach far beyond the community/peer networks themselves. Communities and peers, although potentially some of the most powerful ways to combat the mental health crisis, are not avenues that can be completely effective in isolation. Everyone and every resource needs to come together.

Around the world, young people are experiencing ever increasing mental health battles, which are often hindered by stigma and region-specific barriers. In order to support young people, reduce suffering and stigma, and create a society that will be better for our future generations, we must all come together and learn from each other. Whilst there will be differences between us, we can always learn from what others are doing. 

That is why, for Youth Mental Health Day this year, PLOS Mental Health Executive Editor Dr Karli Montague-Cardoso hosted a panel discussion between youth mental health advocates from across the globe. She spoke with Suzanne Fox (Co-founder of the Yellow Tulip Project (USA)), Alex Mpaata (Founder of Psychiki Ygeia Foundation Uganda (PYFU)), and Geetika Sawhney, (Mental health advocate and professional (India)). You can click on the links to learn more about the amazing work that each panelist does.

Together, the panel explored how community-led approaches and lived experience are driving change, and what we can all learn from them. The panel compared and contrasted the barriers faced in different parts of the world and discussed how working together can help to overcome some of them. 

If you are interested in supporting any of the initiatives that are discussed in the webinar, please reach out to the panelists or see their sites, which we have linked to above, for further details.

You can take a look at all of the articles that have been published in PLOS Mental Health here but some of our youth mental health highlights include:

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