Child and Adolescent Mental Health in the Enlarged European Union: Overview of the CAMHEE Project

In the context of EU enlargement, an initiative has been undertaken by a network of organisations in Lithuania to identify opportunities and challenges for improving policies and practices in child and adolescent mental health in the EU countries, with a special focus on the new EU Member States. This initiative, supported by more than 30 partner organisations in 15 EU countries, has identified several issues of strategic importance, including parenting (special emphasis on families with one or both parents with mental health problems), prevention of destructive and selfdestructive behaviour in schools, and the need to develop a balanced spectrum of services focused on promotion, prevention and community-based services for children and families at risk. Numerous vicious circles, identified by CAMHEE project partners in most EU Member States (and significantly more pronounced in the new Member States), indicate that there is huge room for improvement at all levels: legislation, policy development and implementation, involvement of civil society (communities, families, children), research, evaluation and monitoring, and development of services tailored to the needs of children and families. While it is obvious that political will is needed to develop and implement modern CAMH policies, it is also of the utmost importance to realise that good data collection and research — both quantitative and qualitative — is needed so that these policies are well-informed. This overview briefly introduces the problems of strategic importance identified, which are presented more broadly in other articles in the Special Issue.