A staggering number of young people in the U.S. experience serious mental health problems. Some three million young people, ages 15-24, have attempted suicide, seven million have considered it and 12 million have experienced depressive symptoms. In 1998, a program called Reach Out! was established in Australia to improve the mental health of young people there, combining comprehensive, evidence-based mental health content with sophisticated youth involvement programs. The result was a web-based service relevant and helpful to young people with mental health difficulties. Today it is the leading online mental health resource for young people in Australia. Most importantly, youth suicide rates have declined 47 percent in that country since its launch. The Inspire Foundation has received a $100,000 grant from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation to seed efforts to launch Reach Out! in the U.S., in line with the Foundation’s focus on community-based resources to address serious mental health issues.

Especially significant, it is expected that Reach Out! in the U.S. will be able to reach historically underserved groups who are at-risk and hard-to-reach including Hispanic females, who suffer from the highest rates of suicide attempts, depression and eating disorders, African-American males, exposed to the highest rates of community violence and drug use, Asian-American females, who suffer from high rates of depression, anxiety and suicide attempts, and gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender young people, who are 3-5 times more likely to attempt suicide compared to all other young people. Content on acculturation, the specific issues these groups face along with the use of digital storytelling, social networking and other relevant platforms are expected to help address many of these groups and their concerns.

The BApK (Bundesverband der Angehorigen psychisch Kranker) offers weekend workshops for family members of schizophrenia patients to share experiences and receive training in mechanisms and strategies for coping with stress related to home care. Curriculum development and delivery by experts in the field are supported through a $200,000 grant over three years. For each year, two sessions will gather 15 participants each for training in coping strategies and sharing of experiences as caregivers of schizophrenic patients. Effectiveness evaluation will be managed by the research group -- Evaluation of Sociopsychiatric Practice -- from the Department of Sociopsychiatry and Psychotherapy at Hanover Medical University. A communication plan will be devised to encourage replication, based on indicators of successful outcomes.

An initial psycho-educational weekend seminar was held in the autumn of 2005. Three additional weekend events were to be hosted by BApK in 2006. Three train-the-trainer seminars, intended to build further capacity for assisting family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia, were to be offered in 2006-2007.

The University Child Psychiatry Department at the “Aghia Sophia” Children’s Hospital, Athens, Greece, will implement and operate a mental health hotline and crisis assessment and support center, to address the dramatic growth of the incidence of diagnosed reactive psychological disorders among youths.

The hotline and support center will identify mental health problems early and support and ensure easy access to appropriate mental health services for children, adolescents and their parents, provide primary advisory services along with guidelines regarding referral to mental health specialists, offer information services on youth mental health issues to health professionals, and record current needs in the field of mental health of children, adolescents and their families. The program is supported by a two-year, $500,000 grant to the Greek Association for Psychological Health in Children and Adolescents.