Regionwide Mental Health Week Launches with Focus on Children, Connection, and Community-Based Care

PAHO and the OAS have launched the first Inter‑American Mental Health Week—"Empower, Connect, Care"—spotlighting child and youth mental health and regionwide capacity building.

Regionally coordinated activities provide immediate tools for primary care and school systems. The initiative includes a webinar with regional experts, a regional workshop focused on 911 emergency‑response capacity, and a new self‑paced 10‑module online primary‑care course titled "Improving the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents in Primary Care" that trains non‑specialists in early identification and common presentations; these components will help scale non‑specialist competencies and support school‑based psychosocial responses as part of rights‑based, patient‑centered community care.

The launch foregrounds fostering social and emotional skills and training for early identification in primary care, and primary care trainers, school health leads, and regional policy planners should prioritize uptake and local dissemination.

Evidence supports making social connection an explicit population message because it lowers depression risk and affects stress and immune pathways. Mechanistically and epidemiologically, stronger social ties are associated with reduced depression incidence, modulation of stress responses and immune function, and lower long‑term risks of cardiovascular disease and dementia.

The report above recommends low‑barrier, scalable behaviors for campaigns—encouraging neighborhood interactions, joining groups, converting existing commitments into social opportunities, pets, and brief intentional contacts—to operationalize "Connect" for children, families, and communities. Risk communicators, school counselors, and community health workers should adapt these tactics into age‑appropriate materials and brief interventions.