ArticleChild and adolescent mental health2025
Debate: Where to next for universal school-based mental health interventions? Time to move towards more effective alternatives.
Article in Child and adolescent mental health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Annual Research Review: Improving school climate to improve child and adolescent mental health and reduce inequalities.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Review
- Potential harm from universal school-based mental health interventions: Candidate mechanisms and future directions.Current opinion in psychology · 2026Review
- Do all adolescents benefit equally from school-based mental health interventions? A subgroup analysis by depression severity at 12 and 18 months follow-up.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Transdiagnostic prevention in youth mental health, Part II: interventions.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- The fine line between the cure and the illness: the risks of prescriptive emotionality and sociality for youth mental health.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2026Review
- Efficacy of a school-based, universal prevention programme for depression and anxiety in adolescents (OurFutures Mental Health): a two-arm cluster-randomised controlled trial.EClinicalMedicine · 2025Article
- Using the service needs index to quantify complexity and identify treatment needs across youth mental health service populations: an observational study.International journal of mental health systems · 2025Article
- Investing in youth public mental health in India: multi-stakeholder co-production of a whole school program to promote the mental health of Indian adolescents.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There is an urgent need to improve mental health outcomes among young people. One approach taken to address this problem has been the design and delivery of universal school-based prevention, based on therapeutic models such as CBT and mindfulness. Such interventions are delivered to groups of young people, irrespective of risk or need. However, in this commentary, we argue that the initial appeal of universal interventions has not been supported by the evidence: universal school-based prevention is less effective than targeted approaches, often leads to null or unsustained positive effects, has the potential to elicit negative effects and is not well liked by young people themselves. In addition, many young people in each classroom already meet the criteria for a mental disorder, meaning that prevention approaches may not be appropriate or effective for this group. In this commentary, we respond to Birrell et al.'s (2025) paper by arguing that the field should move away from universal prevention and instead invest our limited resources in the refinement and dissemination of interventions with a stronger evidence base, such as one-to-one, targeted and indirect approaches.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.