On June 5, 2023, the expert seminar for a Pilot Project on Enhancement of Child and Adolescent Mental Health was held at Shanghai Mental Health Center. The event invited Li Wenkai, the Chief Representative of the China Medical Board (CMB), Wang Yu, the Deputy Director of the Beijing Representative Office of CMB, and Wang Feng, the Director of the Student Development Research Center for Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, to provide guidance for the project. Jiang Fan, the communist party secretary of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Xie Bin, the communist party secretary of Shanghai Mental Health Center (SMHC), Zhao Min, the president of SMHC, Cheng Wenhong, the director of the child and adolescent mental health department, heads of relevant departments from SMHC, and members of the project attended the seminar.
Dr. Zhong Na, the deputy director of the rehabilitation department of SMHC, briefly introduced the first draft of the project bid. She stressed that this project would be based on assessing the ecological demand for mental health services, and will connect existing mental health service models and build the bridge of key nods in the mental health service system for children and adolescents.
Dr. Li Wenkai highly praised the project's overall design and preliminary preparations, and looks forward to the final implementation plan. Dr. Li suggested that the project members should further integrate resources from various fields, complement each other's advantages, sort out and integrate existing achievements in the design. After that, Dr. Wang Yu provided suggestions on the mechanism and institutional guarantees for the project's future implementation and the project team's interdisciplinary composition. Mr. Wang Feng proposed that attention should be paid to the current mental health status of primary and secondary school students and the establishment of educational administrative departments. In addition, he emphasized the importance of combining medical education with training for teachers and functional leaders.
Prof. Xie Bin suggested that we should pay more attention to ecological analysis in school, focusing on reducing the students' psychological stress. Prof. Zhao Min proposed that we need to effectively utilize school resources and mobilize various forces to form a joint force to promote project implementation. She also pointed out that through the implementation of this project, we could get a high-quality disciplinary team with an international perspective, which can provide professional support for future research on mental health for children and adolescents in Shanghai and even nationwide.
Prof. Jiang Fan commented that the project is of good significance for the education of primary and secondary students. She said the project should be based on schools to identify the current problems of students’ mental health, and solve the difficulties encountered in the implementation process. She hopes that this project can contribute to addressing the increasingly prominent mental health issues of children and adolescents in China.
