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Mental health problems make a significant contribution to morbidity and mortality in adolescents worldwide. To address mental health in adolescents policy response should intertwine the life course approach and the ecological model that positions adolescents in the context of multifactorial influences. The purpose of this paper is to describe policy response at four levels: multisector policies and interventions, health systems policies and interventions, evidence-based clinical interventions and actions to monitor progress. It aims to analyse the implications for adolescent mental health of key recent global commitments including the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health.

Multisector policies and interventions on determinants of adolescent mental health and well-being are drawn from the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health. Key health systems actions are derived from the Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan (2013-2020). In both cases, policies and interventions are made specific for provisions relevant to adolescents. Examples of implementation of policies and interventions are drawn from a World Health Organization (WHO) review of national policy documents found in WHO MiNDbank. A list of indicators to monitor progress is being proposed based on Mental Health Atlas and WHO indicators for adolescent health.

With some notable exceptions, the mental health of adolescents is not adequately addressed by national health policies. There is a considerable body of evidence on the effectiveness of policies and interventions, and recent global commitments give new hope for promoting adolescent mental health through a multisectoral response, within which the health sector has an important role to play. Global reporting mechanisms, including the Mental Health Atlas, should be “adolescent-sensitive”, meaning that adolescent specific impact, outcomes, inputs and determinants should be measured, reported and acted upon.

This paper analyses the meaning specific to adolescents in the policies and interventions promoted in the SDGs, the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health and the Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan (2013-2020). For the first time a four-levels policy response specific to adolescent mental health is put together: multisector policies and interventions, health systems policies and interventions, evidence-based clinical interventions and actions to monitor progress.

In recent years there has been an increasing focus on improving the physical health of people with serious mental illness and many policies and guidelines are now tailored to support professionals working in mental health services to meet these requirements. We found, however, that the physical health care policies produced by mental health trusts in England varied enormously. Policies were often cumbersome, vague and lacked clear guidance on what particular action should be taken, when it should be taken, and by whom. Physical health care policy documents of three mental health care trusts in the north sector of the East Midlands Strategic Health Authority (UK) were examined in detail. We found significant disparities between the policies in terms of size, readability, external references and reading cost. None could be read swiftly and all incorporated vague language into their directives. It would be beneficial for there to be more consideration given to forming local policies that are readable, succinct, and unambiguous. There is potential for considerable economy of effort with collaboration in production of these documents.

The aim of this study is to analyse the position and role of mental health in health promotion policy. Policy documents from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, England and Portugal indicate that, although mental health is considered a serious issue, it is problematic in policy terms. A range of arguments are put forward, making the case for the importance of mental health within the health promotion agenda, including the classification of mental illness as a public health problem, socio‐economic and individual costs of mental health problems and the view that mental well‐being is a crucial element of overall health. However problems of definition, measurement and a traditional focus on treatment and care continue to make mental health promotion problematic for policy makers.

Although there has been a commitment to develop a policy framework to support vulnerable adults at risk of abuse, there remains concern around its lack of use within National Health Service inpatient settings and mental health services in particular. A gap between policy and practice appears to have developed, which leaves inpatients vulnerable to inadequate responses to allegations of adult abuse. This article will provide a critical overview of the policy and practice issues that affect the use of adult protection procedures.

This paper presents a thematic synthesis of mental health policies published in England from 1999 to 2020.

This paper aims to present a thematic synthesis of mental health policies published in England from 1999 to 2020. The authors specifically focus on ethnicity-related mental health issues highlighted in policies, policy recommendations and performance measurements of policy implementation.

Findings from this synthesis demonstrate that ethnic mental health inequalities remain comparable over the past two decades. Ongoing issues include a lack of data on the ethnicity of mental health services users. Where data is available, these highlight ethnic inequalities in access to, experiences of and outcomes of mental health services, as well as a lack of cultural capability in health-care professionals. Policy recommendations have also remained the same during this time and include: collecting data on the ethnicity of service users, raising awareness of the cultural needs of Black and Minority ethnic populations amongst health-care professionals, recruiting BME staff into mental health care services and improving community engagement. The synthesis identified poor indicators of performance measurement on policy implementation and weak monitoring regimes.

The synthesis identified poor indicators of performance measurement on policy implementation and weak monitoring regimes.

This paper presents a thematic synthesis of mental health policies published in England from 1999 to 2020.

English governance has repeatedly had a tendency to veer between national, regional and local centres of power and influence. This has often led to profound disagreements, sometimes even open conflict. National policy guidance is usually helpful, if developed through consultation, to steer a clear, coherent direction for the system. But a narrow, excessively top‐down, mechanistic target‐driven approach can lead to a prevailing culture of ticking boxes at the expense of real patient priorities. Government ministers and civil servants, however, are often caught in a tension between being too dogmatic, or alternatively too flexible and giving responsibility to local agencies, whereupon people may complain about a ‘postcode lottery’ in services. Balancing perspectives and narratives in a coherent way for policy development and implementation and service improvement is a major challenge of leadership. The creation of the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) was designed to bring together the local, regional and the national in a form that would see policy and practice mutually developed and nurtured at all levels of governance.

Internationally, there has been a move towards more recovery-oriented mental health policies for people living with mental illness, and some countries have included well-being as a population-level objective. In practice, these policy objectives can be difficult to achieve because of deeply rooted policy legacies, including a biomedical approach to care and the stigma associated with mental illness. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how interventions that operate outside the formal mental health system, such as recovery colleges (RCs), may advance these policy objectives more easily than efforts at broader system reform.

This study conducted a scoping review to explore the features and context of RCs that make the model an attractive and feasible opportunity to advance a recovery and well-being agenda. Our research is motivated by the initial and growing adoption of RCs by the Canadian Mental Health Association. This paper applies the consolidated framework for implementation research to analyse features of the model and the context of its implementation in Canada.

The RC’s educational approach, adaptability, coproduced nature and positioning outside the formal mental health system are key features that facilitate implementation without disrupting deeply entrenched policy legacies. Other facilitators in the Canadian context include the implementing organisation’s independence from government, its federated structure and the model’s alignment with national policy objectives.

This paper highlights how interventions outside the formal mental healthcare system can promote stated recovery and well-being policy goals.

This paper provides an historical perspective on dual diagnosis and current developments in the delivery of mental health and addiction services to people with dual diagnosis in Ireland. In light of government policy, it describes attempts made to improve the standards of care provided, recognising deficits in services, and not just those services provided to clients with a dual diagnosis. It identifies a number of issues that need to be addressed, including training, research, service developments, co‐operation between different service providers, information availability and measurement of client outcomes. It concludes that, although there is increasing awareness of the issue of dual diagnosis, this has not resulted in significant relevant policy implementation and improvements in services provided to clients with a dual diagnosis. Yet there is sufficient evidence available for a meaningful response to dual diagnosis, given the state of play in policy and service delivery in those settings with which people with dual diagnosis engage.

The promotion of public mental health is a challenging endeavour for policy actors and stakeholders. In particular, the implementation of public mental health initiatives highlighted in Standard One of the National Service Framework for Mental Health has been poor and patchy (Department of Health, 2004a). This paper attempts to illuminate the complex process of public mental health policy implementation at local level through the exploration of stakeholders' actions.An exploratory case study design was selected, focusing on one local health and social care community within inner London. A conceptual framework about policy implementation and the concept of partnership working are used to shape the analysis of the empirical findings.This paper addresses the challenges associated with the promotion of public mental health initiatives within one local NHS health and social care community. It attempts to increase the understanding and insights into public mental health policy and practice at local level from a policy implementation standpoint. Using an empirical case study of public mental health in an English locality, some of the key issues explored in this paper are about perceptions of public mental health concepts among key policy actors and also stakeholders' behaviour in Local Implementation team (LIT) partnerships. Furthermore, the authors address the issue of how local policy actors engage the local community in supporting the needs of vulnerable groups such as service users and black and minority ethnic (BME) groups.Although functional partnership are essential for the promotion of public mental health initiatives, the interdependencies of the stakeholders, competition for resources, power dynamics and the difficulty of engaging a diverse range of voices have a significant limiting effect on achieving successful policy implementation on the ground.

This paper reports the first phase of a research project on mental health policy in Scotland that investigates the way knowledge is mobilised in the policy process. In this first phase of the project, the authors' concern has been to map the organisational domain of mental health policy in Scotland, paying attention to the form and structure of agencies and organisations as well as to the relationships between them. The paper describes a set of organisations in which central government is dominant but notes also a range of organisational forms and functions, and a diversity of sources of knowledge, expertise and information on which they draw. A dense network of linkages between agencies is identified.