Helmut Remschmidt & Barry Nurcombe 
The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents 
An area of global neglect

Around the world, a vast number of children and adolescents suffer
from mental and neurological disorders and only a small proportion
of them receive adequate care. This is so in both developing and
developed countries. The need to raise awareness about this problem
and provide specific advice regarding their prevention and
treatment was identified as a priority for the World Psychiatric
Association by Professor Ahmed Okasha during his Presidency of the
Association and resulted in the creation of his Presidential
Programme on Child Mental Health. This book presents some of the
fruits of this programme and constitutes a global call to action
for mental health workers and policy makers.

The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents: An area of
global neglect brings together information on the burden of
mental disorders in childhood and adolescence with methods of
raising public awareness of these problems. The book also
describes therapeutic and preventive interventions that could
diminish them. It then presents the results of field studies in
Brazil, Egypt and Russia documenting the effectiveness of
interventions to prevent school dropout in those three very
different countries.

With its emphasis on practical guidance for the development of
interventions to prevent or treat child and adolescent mental
health, The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents: An
area of global neglect provides much-needed information of
direct interest to health professionals and the many others
involved in the provision of health care to children and
adolescents in both the developing and the developed countries.

Table of Content

List of Contributors

Advisory Board

Preface

Acknowledgements

1 A Global Programme for Child and Adolescent Mental Health:
A Challenge in the New Millennium (Myron Belfer, Helmut
Remschmidt, Barry Nurcombe, Ahmed Okasha, and Norman
Sartorius).

2 Public Awareness of Child and Adolescent Mental Health: A
Review of the Literature (Sam Tyano and Anat
Fleischman).

3 The Epidemiology and Burden of Child and Adolescent Mental
Disorder (Myron Belfer and Barry Nurcombe).

4 Disseminating Child and Adolescent Mental Health Treatment
Methods: An International Feasibility Study (Jose J.
Baumeister, John Fayyad, Richard Harrington (deceased), Jack (S.F.)
Hung, Kimberly Hoagwood, Peter Jensen, Kelly Kelleher, Laura
Murray, Cheryl So; and site directors Alan Apter and Orit Krispin
(Tel Aviv, Israel), John Fayyad, MD (Lebanon), Luis Rhode and Paulo
Knapp (Porto Alegre, Brazil), and Amira Seif El Din (Alexandria,
Egypt)).

5 Prevention of Mental Health Disorders in Children and
Adolescents

5.1 The Principles of Prevention in Child and
Adolescent Mental Health (Barry Nurcombe).

5.2 Evidence-based Primary Prevention Programs for the
Promotion of Mental Health in Children and Adolescents: A
Systematic Worldwide Review (Martine F. Flament, Hien
Nguyen, Howard Schachter, Claudia Furino, Cathy Cuzner, Danuta
Wasserman, Norman Sartorius, and Helmut Remschmidt).

5.3 Violence and Trauma: Evidence-based Assessment and
Intervention in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review
(Ernesto Caffo and Carlotta Belaise).

5.4 School Dropout: A Systematic Worldwide Review
Concerning Risk Factors and Preventive Interventions (Ana
Soledade Graeff-Martins, Tatyana Dmitrieva, Amira Seif El Din,
Ernesto Caffo, Martine F. Flament, Barry Nurcombe, Per-Anders
Rydelius, Helmut Remschmidt, and Luis Augusto Rhode).

5.5 School Violence: Epidemiology, Background,
and Prevention (Helmut Remschmidt).

6 Preventive Interventions in School Dropout: Three Field
Studies

6.1 A Comprehensive Intervention for the Prevention of School
Dropout in Brazil (Ana Soledade Graeff-Martins, Sylvia
Oswald, Júlia Obst Comassetto, Christian Kieling, Renata Rocha
Gonçalves, and Luis Augusto Rhode).

6.2A Comprehensive Program for the Prevention of
Dropout in an Egyptian Public School (Amira Seif El Din, M.
Azzer, and Doa Habib).

6.3 A Comprehensive Intervention to Prevent School
Dropout and

Reduce School Absenteeism in a Public School in a Russian
Industrial City (V. Andreyuk, A. Zanozin, and Tatjana
Dmitrieva).

Index.

About the author

Helmut Remschmidt, MD, Ph D, Professor of Psychiatry,
Phillips University, Marburg, Germany

Barry Nurcombe, MD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry,
University of Queensland, Australia

Myron L. Belfer, MD, MPA, Professor of Psychiatry,
Harvard Medical School, USA

Norman Sartorius, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, University
of Geneva, Switzerland

Ahmed Okasha, MD, Professor and Director, WHO
Collaborating Center, Institute of Psychiatry, Ain Shams
University, Cairo, Egypt