International Alliance for Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Schools

Welcome to Intercamhs

Intercamhs is a new international alliance that aims to promote the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people.

Already, we have 244 members from 35 countries and membership is growing rapidly. Intercamhs brings together a wide range of professionals from all over the world, each with their own expertise and experience.

Working definition: What does INTERCAMHS mean by "Promoting Mental Health through Schools"?

Promoting mental health through schools supports a whole school approach involving effective mental health promotion, intervention and treatment. This approach is supported by policies, skills for social emotional learning, a healthy psycho-social school environment and access to services in the school or in the broader community. The full participation of teachers, students, families and community agencies is encouraged with informed dialogue and collaboration among people and programmes throughout all phases of the continuum. This action is supported by principles that value diversity and inclusiveness, and practice that creates conditions for empowerment and school organizational development. It emphasizes the critical role of evidence to guide training, policy, research and practice across four areas:

• Universal mental health promotion, which seeks to improve school psychosocial environments, skills-based health education for social, emotional learning and brings resources and programs to all students to promote health, successful teaching and learning and academic success;
• Selective interventions, which provide prevention programs for young people presenting risk factors for problems;
• Indicated interventions, which provide early interventions to young people exhibiting emotional and behavioural problems; and
• Treatment, which provides more intensive services to youth presenting established emotional/behavioural problems.

If you have comments or feedback on this working definition of mental health promotion through schools, Intercamhs would love to hear from you. You may participate in a webboard discussion at: http://boards.edc.org:8080/~intercamhs-public.

NEW!

Australia country-level report for the International Principals Survey is now available.

Please click here.

Canada country-level report for the International Principals Survey is now available.

Please click here.

A poster of THE MELBOURNE CHARTER for promoting mental health and preventing mental and behavioural disorders is now available:

THE MELBOURNE CHARTER

The Report of Major Findings from the International Survey of Principals Concerning Emotional and Mental Health and Well-Being is now available.

Please click here.

The presentation slides from the talk given by Louise Rowling and Gloria Wells at the conference "Expanding Our Horizons: Moving Mental Health and Wellness Promotion into the Mainstream" in Toronto, March 6th are available (warning: 11 MB):

• PowerPoint Slides

The Sept. 8, 2008 Melbourne Mind Your Head meeting report and photos are now available.

The global results of the International Survey of Principals on Emotional and Mental Health and Well-Being will be released shortly.

In the meantime, please see these two compilations of media reporting from Australia:

• Media Monitor Report 1
• Media Monitor Report 2

and these powerpoint presentation slides:

• Louise Rowling and Cheryl Vince Whitman
• Mark Weist

3 new upcoming conferences!

Please check the Conferences tab to learn more about:

• 22nd Annual Research Conference on Children's Mental Health
• DreamCatching 2009: Hands-on Workshops in Math and Science for Teachers of Aboriginal Students
• Positive Schools 2009 Mental Health and Wellbeing Conference

In June a high level meeting was held in Brussels that resulted in European Pact for Mental Health and Well-being. A priority area is Mental Health in Youth and Education. Click here to access the Pact and papers and presentations at the meeting.

Register to attend Mind Your Head: Leading the Way to Healthy Minds, Healthy Schools, a pre-conference event of the World Mental Health Conference.

Interconnexions, a collaborative project of Intercamhs, ICP and APAPDC, invites you to attend a one day seminar in Melbourne Australia on 8th September 2008 entitled Mind Your Head: Leading the Way to Healthy Minds, Healthy Schools. A preconference event of the 5th World Conference on the Promotion of Mental Health and the Prevention of Mental and Behavioral Disorders, this seminar will bring together international leaders in education and mental health for an open exploration of issues and ideas. Our mission is to exert our collective influence to build positive school cultures that embrace mental health as an essential foundation of any learning community. Recommendations from this meeting will go forward for consideration in the Melbourne Charter for Mental Health Promotion and Prevention being developed in the World Mental Health conference. I'm interested and would like to register now!

The 2008 International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professionals (IACAPAP) Conference will be held April 30 to May 3 in Istanbul. View their conference announcement and call for papers.

Read a letter from the President of Intercamhs, Louise Rowling, in the latest issue of the Intercamhs newsletter.

Intercamhs recently entered into a partnership with the International Confederation of Principals (ICP). View a picture of the ICP signing or read more about our collaborative efforts to advance mental health through schools in the latest issue of the Intercamhs newsletter.

Cheryl Vince Whitman, Intercamhs Vice President, attended the 2007 (IACAPAP) conference in Paris and contributed ideas to the Declaration of the Consortium for Global Infant, Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Explore planning tools on mental health policy and implementation.

Browse a collection of articles on the development, implementation and evaluation of curricula to promote mental health in schools.