Mohan, R., Mian, A., Silva, F. D., Cawthorpe, D., & Qayyum, Z. (2026). A framework for Global Child and Adolescent Mental Health (GC-CAMH) Curriculum: why the world cannot wait. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-026-01038-z
Abstract:
Children and adolescents face unprecedented escalating convergence of adversity today. Climate change, war/conflict, forced displacement, economic/political instability, digital pressures, social media, sociodemographic inequalities, parental stress, reconfigured societies and COVID-19 have created more homogeneously hazardous adverse childhood environments. They compound individual, familial and societal risks of early/cumulative exposure to childhood adversity, consistently amongst the strongest predictors of later-life mental disorder in a dose-dependent manner across populations. Yet, the world is without a unified professional, community-focussed, locally adaptable curriculum framework for global child and adolescent mental health (GC-CAMH). Existing training programmes remain adult-focused, narrow in scope or region- specific. Essential competencies in ethics, confidentiality, advocacy, systems-based care, humanitarian responsiveness, cultural sensitivities, intra/inter-community engagement and interprofessional collaboration are variable. A recent review of 117 Psychiatry curriculum publications (2010–2025) identified only two that described themselves as global in scope, with no unified CAMH curriculum. Psychiatric training frameworks prioritise adult models, while developmental psychiatry remains fragmented/variable. This disparity is more than an academic gap. It represents structural, qualitative and functional vulnerabilities in global mental health architecture. Without globally informed, locally coherent training, we remain ill-equipped to respond effectively or quickly to dynamic, cumulative adversities.