WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the Improving Child Mental Health in an Insecure World – 10 October 2024

Your Majesty Queen Silvia,

Vice-Chancellor Broberg,

Dear colleagues and friends,

God eftermiddag, and happy World Mental Health Day.

I'm very sorry I was not able to travel to be with you in person, but thank you for accommodating me virtually.

You may not know this, but Svenska played a very important part in my career.

Although I did my PhD in the UK, at the University of Nottingham, it was funded by the Swedish International Development Association, and I also did some coursework at Umeå University.

So I am a living witness of Sweden's commitment to capacity building, and I owe Sweden a debt of gratitude for investing in me. I hope you think it was a good investment!

Thank you also for bringing attention to this critical issue, and I congratulate you on establishing the Queen Silvia Professorship in Global Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the University of Gothenburg.

More research in this area is critical to improve our understanding of the challenges young people face to their mental health, design tailored solutions, and understand how to scale them up.

So our full support to the Vice Chancellor and the university of Gothenburg to make this project a success.

Three weeks ago, I visited a town called Adré in Chad, on the border with Sudan.

Since Sudan's civil war started in April last year, almost 680 000 refugees have crossed into Chad seeking food and safety. These are part of the 3 million Sudanese who have fled.

I met mothers clutching their children, who had walked for days to reach the border - they were hungry, tired, alone, afraid. They told us horror stories. Their houses were burned, their crops were destroyed, their cattle were stolen.

Shockingly, almost 70 percent of refugees who have crossed from Sudan to Chad are children, many of them adolescent boys fleeing arbitrary detention or forced recruitment.

The second story is, shortly after the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in 2022, I visited Ukraine. I also a reception centre for refugees in Poland, where I met a mother from the Mariupol area, who told me that when the shelling began - heavy bombardment - her young daughter was very scared.

Her mother told her, "Don't worry, it's just a thunderstorm. It will pass." But it wasn't. It was a bombardment.

I cannot begin to imagine what the long-term consequences are for the mental health of the children of Sudan, or Ukraine, Gaza, Haiti, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen - even my own country Ethiopia - or the other troubled corners of our world.

In most of these places, mental health services for children were already scarce before the conflict began.

Now, when they're most needed, they're even scarcer.

And conflict is just one threat to the mental health of the world's children and adolescents, including the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, violence, cyber-bullying and the climate crisis.

Is it any wonder that our children and adolescents are suffering more mental illness than ever before?

A reported one in seven adolescents experiences a mental health condition.

Depression, anxiety, and conduct disorders are among the leading causes of illness and disability among adolescents, and suicide is the third leading cause of death in young people aged 15 to 29 years for both sexes.

And yet on average, countries dedicate less than 2% of their health budgets to mental health, and services for children and young people are a small proportion of that. Mental health is really underfunded.

In low-income countries, there is less than one child mental health worker for every 10 million people.

Even in high-income countries, services for young people are often difficult to access, inequitably distributed, and of variable quality.

Of course, there is some good news: there is now more awareness about, and attention to, mental health than ever before.

For example, WHO is working with UNICEF on a Joint Programme on Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing for children and adolescents, currently involving 13 countries.

At this year's World Health Assembly, WHO Member States also adopted a resolution on integrating mental health and psychosocial support in emergency response, including armed conflict.

And WHO is increasingly embedding mental health in our own emergency response operations, including in Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine.

For example, since 2022, with WHO support Ukraine has established an intersectoral coordination council for mental health under the Prime Minister, and launched a national mental health and psychosocial support programme overseen by First Lady Olena Zelenska. I met her last year, and her commitment to mental health is very, very strong, and I appreciate her leadership.

WHO and our partners are coordinating over 280 organizations providing mental health and psychosocial support in Ukraine.

Even when the war ends, the trauma will remain for the children of Ukraine, as it will for the children of Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere. Supporting those children now and in the future is a must.

Thank you once again to Your Majesty for your leadership on this, and to the Vice Chancellor, for your commitment to improving the health and well-being of children and adolescents through this new professorship. It's timely, and as I said, you have WHO's full support.

We look forward to collaborating with all of you to realise the vision countries had when they established WHO in 1948: the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health for all people, of all ages, at all times, as a fundamental human right.

Because there is no health without mental health.

Tack ska du ha. Tack så mycket.

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