#YouthMentalHealthDay - What if we started talking about mental health before something went wrong?

By Savera Sidhu

One in seven adolescents aged 10 to 19 globally experiences a mental health condition. Behind

that statistic are young people navigating school, friendships, family expectations and a digital

world that follows them home. But there is another part of the story that a statistic cannot

capture: everything that happens before a struggle becomes visible enough to be recognised.

We have become more willing to talk about mental health, and that shift matters. But many of

our systems still become most attentive when something has already gone wrong. We ask how

to respond when a young person is struggling, while giving less attention to whether they had

the opportunity, language and support to understand what they were experiencing beforehand.

For girls, that gap can be significant. Growing up can mean learning to keep functioning even

when something feels wrong. A girl can meet deadlines, maintain friendships and appear

completely fine while privately feeling overwhelmed. She may know she is not herself without

knowing whether what she is experiencing is stress, anxiety, loneliness or something else

entirely. When we have not been taught how to recognise those experiences, reaching out can

feel like an admission that we are no longer coping.

This is why emotional wellbeing needs to be part of growing up, not simply part of crisis

response. The World Health Organization identifies adolescence as a critical period for

developing social and emotional skills, while around half of mental health conditions begin by

age 18. Those years are therefore not only a period in which we should watch for warning

signs. They are an opportunity to build the understanding and confidence that can help young

people navigate challenges before they become overwhelming.

Prevention does not mean telling girls to solve their own problems. It means making sure they

are not expected to carry those problems without the tools to understand them. Sometimes that

begins with something deceptively simple: having the language to say, “I am not okay,” and

knowing that this does not need to be accompanied by a crisis to deserve attention.

That is why Girl Rising’s new Emotional Wellbeing Guide, launching on September 18 for

World Youth Mental Health Day, is so timely. A resource like this can create an accessible

starting point for girls to reflect on their emotional wellbeing before they are forced to confront

it at breaking point. It also reinforces something that is easy to overlook in conversations about

youth wellbeing: young people should not simply be the audience for support designed around

us. Our experiences should help shape it. We know the pressures of growing up in a world of

constant connectivity, comparison and expectation, and that perspective matters when deciding

what meaningful support should look like.

Of course, no guide can replace professional support when it is needed, and prevention cannot

eliminate every mental health challenge. But that is not the purpose of prevention. Its purpose

is to change what happens earlier, when there is still an opportunity to build understanding

rather than simply respond to distress.

This World Youth Mental Health Day, I hope we ask a question beyond how we support young

people once they are struggling: what could change if we started earlier?

A girl should not have to reach a crisis before her wellbeing becomes a priority. She should

have permission to understand what she is feeling while she is still finding the words for it.

Sometimes meaningful support is not what we offer after something has gone wrong. It is what

we make possible before it does.

Girl Rising’s Emotional Wellbeing Guide is one place to start.