From October 29 to 31, 2025, the International Symposium on Building a Mental Health Service System for Children and Adolescents was successfully held in Shanghai. The event was hosted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (SJTUSM) and its affiliated Shanghai Mental Health Center and supported by the Shanghai Mental Health Service System Optimization Project for Children and Adolescents.
The three-day symposium convened experts and scholars from China and beyond in the fields of mental health, public health, education and social work. Participants engaged in in-depth discussions and exchanges ontopics such as the development of mental health service systems for children and adolescents, resource integration, and international best practices.
Day 1：Visit to Minhang Campus and Joint Discussion on Building Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service Systems
On October 29, the first day of symposium, all invited participants from China and abroad visited the Minhang Campus of Shanghai Mental Health Center. The visit aimed to gain first-hand insights into the center’s latest progress in child and adolescent mental health services, discipline development, and multi-sector collaboration, laying a solid foundation for the in-depth exchanges to follow. During the visit, Chunbo Li, Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Mental Health Center affiliated with SJTUSM, met with a delegation led by Roger I. Glass, President of the China Medical Board (CMB). The two sides explored opportunities for international collaboration in establishing mental health service systems for children and adolescents.
Professor Chunbo Li met with Roger I. Glass, President of the China Medical Board
Following the visit,Professor Li accompanied the delegation for a tour at the Child and Adolescent Inpatient Ward at the Minhang Campus, as well as the Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment Center for Serious Mental Disease Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment Center for Severe Mental Disease. He provided a detailed overview of the campus’s service layout, functional facilities, and operational models. The delegates highly commended the campus’s efforts in system planning, service capacity building, and multi-sector collaboration.
Professor Chunbo Li guided the experts on a tour of Minhang Campus.
During the meeting, experts convened to discuss key issues related to children and adolescents’ mental health services. The dialogue covered topics such as service procedures and inpatient care, with participants offering valuable suggestions to optimize mental health services for young people. The discussion was lively and highly engaging.
Experts gathered around to exchange ideas.
The first day’s visit not only gave experts a firsthand look at the Shanghai Mental Health Center’s advancements in developing mental health services for children and adolescents, but also offered practical insights and reference points for the lectures and closed-door discussions scheduled for the following two days.
CMB delegation at Shanghai Mental Health Center
Day 2: Collaborative Efforts Toward Optimizing Mental Health Systems
On the morning of October 30, the International Symposium on Building a Mental Health Service System for Children and Adolescents officially launched at the Xuhui Campus of Shanghai Mental Health Center. The morning session featured expert lectures,during which five scholars from the School of Global Health at SJTUSM, Harvard Medical School, Yale New Haven Children's Hospital, NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Emory School of Medicine delivered presentations on pressing issues in the field of mental health.
Min Zhao, President of Shanghai Mental Health Center, delivered remarks
Barbara J. Stoll, Executive Vice President of China Medical Board, delivered remarks
The symposium commenced with the remarks by two distinguished professors: Professor Min Zhao, President of the Shanghai Mental Health Center, and Dr. Barbara J. Stoll, Executive Vice Chair of the China Medical Board (CMB). Both speakers highlighted the key challenges currently facing global mental health, while emphasizing the importance of multi-sector collaboration, coordination between schools and healthcare institutions, and community engagement. They also underscored the significance of international academic exchanges and the sharing of practical experiences in advancing policy implementation and service improvement. Following their remarks, the symposium proceeded to the expert lecture sessions.
Five expertsfrom both China and abroad were invited to deliver keynote presentationson topics including policy developments for children and adolescents’ mental health services, evidence-based practices, self-harm risk assessment and intervention, mental health promotion, and the development of high-quality inpatient care.
Professor Guohong Li shared research findings
Professor Guohong Li, Vice Dean of the School of Global Health at SJTUSM, delivered a keynote lecture titled A Review of Policies, Resources, and Interventions for Children and Adolescent Mental Health in China. She provided a systematic overview of China’s policies and resources related to child and adolescent mental health, summarized developments in services, policies, resources, and relevant interventions over the past decade, and offered recommendations for optimizing resources and enhancing the service system in the future.
Following the keynote, a ceremony for the paper publication in The Lancet Regional Health: Western Pacific was held during the symposium, marking the official release of a collaborative research article led by the Shanghai Mental Health Center and SJTUSM, in partnership with internationally renowned institutions including Harvard University, Yale University, and New York University, as well as co-investigators from Mental Health Center AffiliatedtoTongji University and Peking University Sixth Hospital. Dr. Jie Cai, Editor-in-Chief of the journal, attended the event, joining the celebration of this significant milestone.
Official Publication in The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific
The symposium sessions continued after the publication ceremony. Myron L. Belfer, Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, delivered a keynote address titled “Evidence-based Practice Suggestions to Young Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists in China”. Professor Belfer’s presentation adopted an international evidence-based medicine perspective, systematically highlighting the importance of establishing a scientific evidence base for mental health services for children and adolescents. He also elaborates on the practical challenges and future directions for providing appropriate, accessible care to children with mental health needs and their families across diverse cultural and resource contexts.
Professor Belfer delivered a lecture
Nadine J. Kaslow, Professor and Vice President of Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory School of Medicine, delivered a keynote lecture on “Suicide Assessment, Prevention, Intervention, and Postventionat the Adolescent and Family Levels”. She explored in depth how to identify risks, implement early interventions, and provide sustained support for adolescents and their families following crises. Professor Kaslow noted that while China has made significant progress in this area, challenges remain in adolescent prevention and treatment efforts. She emphasized the need for enhanced systemic collaboration among government, schools, healthcare providers, and social organizations to build multi-tiered support systems grounded in science, accessibility, and cultural sensitivity. This approach aims to reduce stigma around help-seeking, prioritize vulnerable adolescent populations, and foster the development of a multidisciplinary, comprehensive mental health protection framework.
Professor Kaslow delivered a lecture
Jess P. Shatkin, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Pediatrics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, delivered a keynote lecture titled “Mental Health Promotion & Disease Prevention—Not Time to Lose”.Speaking from a public mental health perspective, he explored the primary mental health challenges faced by contemporary adolescents and the practical obstacles within the existing service system. He emphasized that mental health promotion and disease prevention extend beyond clinical practice, constituting a vital component of broader societal health strategies. He systematically analyzed the distinctions between health promotion, disease prevention strategies, and business as usual, highlighting how early education, family support, and integrated social resources can effectively enhance psychological resilience and overall mental health among children and adolescents.
Professor Shatkin delivered a lecture
Andrés S. Martin, Professor of Psychiatry, Medical Director of the Inpatient Service,Yale New Haven Children's Hospital, delivered a keynote lecture titled “Quality Inpatient Mental Health Services for Child and Adolescent”. Professor Martin highlighted that high-quality inpatient care is essential for adolescent mental health, stressing that services should be safe, effective, family-centered, and developmentally appropriate for children and adolescents. He underscored that building a professional workforce and investing in innovative approaches are key to achieving these goals, with the core objectives being the cultivation of adolescents’ psychological resilience, the promotion of recovery, and support for their smooth reintegration into family, school, and community settings. He also shared future directions for service development, including trauma-informed and recovery-oriented care models, peer support and youth-engaged advisory mechanisms in counseling.Additionally, he discussed telehealth technologies for family meetings and follow-up care, as well as seamless intgration with community services—all aimed at establishing a more comprehensive and sustainable inpatient mental health service system for adolescents.
Professor Martin delivered a lecture
On the afternoon of October 30, the team of the Shanghai Mental Health Service System Optimization Project for Children and Adolescents convened a closed-door internal meeting at the Xuhui Campus. The session summarized and reviewed the year-long development efforts, focusing on the project’s achievements as well as key challenges and priority issues that emerged during implementation. The meeting commenced with a comprehensive project report by Dr. Na Zhong, Deputy Director of the Rehabilitation Department at Shanghai Mental Health Center. She reviewed the implementation progress, key achievements, and future work plans for each sub-project. Following the report, the project team held a Home-School-Medical-Community Collaboration Initiative Ceremony, aimed at further strengthening the cross-departmental collaboration network within mental health services for children and adolescents in Shanghai.
The initiative received enthusiastic support from the Shanghai Children’s Medical Center, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Student Mental Health Education Development Center, Shanghai 12355 Youth Hotline, Shanghai Sunshine Community Youth Affairs Center, Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention Mental Health Branch, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Public Health, Minhang District Education Institute, and all member units of the project team.
Dr. Na Zhong gave a report on the overall progress of the project
Home-School-Healthcare-Community Collaboration Initiative Ceremony
Following the ceremony, the eight sub-projects presented their respective progress reports. Leveraging cross-sector collaboration among health, education, youth federation, and social service organizations, the project team focused on the practical mental health needs of children, adolescents, and their families. The eight subprojects aim to enhance and integrate the mental-health service capabilities across schools, healthcare institutions, social organizations, and psychological first-aid services.
On the education system side, the subprojects focus on strengthening collaboration among school psychologists, school physicians, and on-site social workers; enhancing mental-health promotion, problem identification, and early intervention; and improving joint crisis-response mechanisms and school-based psychological consultation structures.
On the healthcare system side, efforts were made to enhance the mental-health service capacity of municipal and district-level psychiatric institutions, explore psychological support during inpatient waiting periods and reinforce cross-system technical collaboration. Efforts were also made to improve the identification and management of psychological issues in non-psychiatric specialties such as pediatrics and emergency medicine, gradually establishing more streamlined clinical pathways.
On the social system side, initiatives aimed to promote community–hospital collaboration in prevention and intervention, improve the management of complex cases, and, through partnerships between the social work department of Shanghai Mental Health Center and the Sunshine Youth Community Affairs Center, support the capacity building of school-based social workers and promote the standardized development of social service organizations. In terms of psychological first aid, efforts focused on strengthening the capabilities of hotlines and volunteer networks, as well as exploring the establishment of shared psychological spaces in communities, thereby expanding the accessibility of mental health services for adolescents.
The eight sub-projects presented in sequence.
Following the presentations of the eight sub-projects, experts from the CMB provided feedback and guidance, fully affirming the project’s systematic approach and cross-departmental collaboration model in building mental health service systems for children and adolescents. Drawing on international experience, the experts offered recommendations to optimize service processes and enhance intervention quality, while encouraging the project team to continue driving practical innovation. Their insights provided valuable references for building an efficient and sustainable mental health service system for children and adolescents. Through pragmatic exchanges, the meeting reached multiple points of consensus, laying a solid foundation for the next phase of project implementation and policy recommendations.
Roger I. Glass, President of China Medical Board
Barbara J. Stoll, Executive Vice President of China Medical Board
John Lichten, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of China Medical Board
Day 3：Advance Research Sharing, Deepen International Cooperation
On October 31, project team members held a small closed-door meeting with international experts, focusing on ongoing research initiatives, expert guidance and opportunities for international collaboration.The session began with the project team presenting updates on current research initiatives, including studies on psychological hotlines and crisis intervention, prevention and intervention for adolescents with gaming disorder, sleep studies for children and adolescents, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) intervention programs. This comprehensive overview highlighted the team’s achievements in data collection, intervention practices, and optimization of mental-health service systems.
Experts provided specific feedback and guidance
Experts then drew upon global best practices to provide constructive recommendations for integrating innovative approaches into localized services, offering valuable insights to streamline project processes and improve intervention quality. The meeting also explored potential avenues for future collaboration, including joint research initiatives, technical exchanges, and cross-border sharing of practical experiences, thereby presenting fresh perspectives and collaborative avenues for advancing child and adolescent mental-health service development.
Three-Day Symposium Concludes Successfully
The three-day symposium concluded on a high note,marked by vibrant discussions and rich exchanges of experience. The event featured presentations of the latest domestic and international research findings, a comprehensive review of the current status and development of Shanghai's mental health service system for children and adolescents, showcased the interim achievements of various sub-projects, and facilitated in-depth dialogue on future optimization pathways, international cooperation, and the application of research findings in practice. The symposium not only fostered deeper dialogue among domestic and international professionals but also introduced new perspectives and approaches forenhancing mental health services for children and adolescents. It laid a solid foundation for advancing high-quality development in child and adolescent mental-health services and for promoting coordinated progress in policy and practice.
