Tackling adolescent mental health from Acton to Africa

The Centre for International Child Health host seminar looking at research on adolescent mental health.

Last week, the Institute of Global Health Innovation’s Global Health Forum joined up with the Centre for International Child Health (CICH), for the second event in their new bi-monthly seminar series dedicated to International Child Health topics.

CICH aims to facilitate multi-disciplinary research partnerships and educational activities for global child health and joins up existing international child health research activities within the College and beyond.

According to the World Health Organisation, 10-20% of children and adolescents experience mental disorders worldwide. Across the globe, adolescents face barriers to getting their issues addressed due to factors such as stigma and a lack of resources surrounding mental health

After CICH Director Professor Beate Kampmann welcomed attendees, Professor Paul Ramchandani, Professor of Child and Adolescent Mental Health provided an introduction to the state of mental health in adolescents and the affects disorders such as depression can have. Dr Cornelius Ani, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry then gave us an insight into the findings of his research on using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to treat mental health disorders in Nigeria.

The final talk was given by Dr Kike Olajide, Wellcome Global Health Clinical Research Fellow at the Centre for Psychiatry at Imperial College. Giving us her findings so far on perinatal depression (PND) in Nigeria, Dr Olajide explained that the three perceived causes of PND were thought to be poverty, difficult relationships and religious misconceptions and myths.

The full event can be watched here.

Hear Dr Kike Olajide speak in depth on perinatal depression in IGHI’s recent podcast here and read her article – ‘Peer-delivered mental health interventions – a pragmatic solution to scaling-up access to mental healthcare?’ here.

Get involved

IGHI’s monthly Global Health Forum provides a platform to bring together Imperial researchers, students, and staff from across all of Imperial’s Faculties to highlight, discuss and disseminate findings on current research and innovations on relevant global health topics. The Forums encourage interdisciplinary discussions with the intention that they will foster inter-Faculty research initiatives and leverage the immense strengths of Imperial College to resolve global health priorities of the early 21st Century.

Join us

The next Global Health Forum will take place on 22 June at 3:00pm at Anthony De Rothschild lecture theatre at St. Mary’s campus, Paddington and will look at the impact of parasites. More details to follow.

The next CICH seminar, ‘Microbiome – Does it really matter for our health?’ will take place on 13 July at 4.00pm in Anthony Rothschild lecture theatre on the St. Mary’s campus. Register here. Find out more about the CICH and its seminar series here.