Background: Suicidal ideation (SI) among university students is a growing public health concern. Self-report screening can be limited by concealment and delayed disclosure. We evaluated a leakage-resistant, proof-of-concept pipeline to detect SI from standardized smartphone-recorded speech. Objective: This study aimed to extract acoustic markers from brief smartphone-based reading tasks and develop machine learning models for suicide risk prediction in university students, enabling low-cost, scalable early screening to support campus mental health services. Methods: Questionnaire data and speech recordings were collected via a WeChat mini program. After screening and clinical confirmation, 96 participants (n=48, 50% with SI; n=48, 50% controls) were included. Age and sex were evaluated as potential confounders. Each participant read 16 standardized sentences. Acoustic features were extracted using openSMILE (version 3.0.2), yielding a 570D feature vector per utterance. To prevent leakage from multiple recordings per speaker, we used participant-level 5-fold cross-validation, assigning all recordings from each participant to a single fold. Seven machine learning algorithms were evaluated using area under the curve (AUC), accuracy, and -score. Results: Acoustic-based models discriminated participants with SI from control participants. The SI group was significantly older than the control group (=.001). Random forest achieved an AUC of 0.813 (accuracy=0.748), and naive Bayes achieved an AUC of 0.806 (accuracy=0.757). Feature families related to pitch, mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, and harmonicity contributed to model performance. Conclusions: Standardized read speech captured via smartphones shows preliminary feasibility for SI discrimination under a leakage-aware evaluation design. External validation and testing with more naturalistic speech are warranted. Trial Registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry ChiCTR2500106625; https://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.html?proj=276927
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SNF Global Center to Convene Second Global Summit on Youth Mental Health
Former Miss South Africa Shudufhadzo Musida joins global experts and partners across UNICEF, McKinsey Health Institute, and UGMH to address critical topics, gaps, and new solutions identified by youth
New York, NY – The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute will host the second Global Summit on Youth Mental Health from September 21-24, 2026, under the theme “Redefining Mental Health Care: Youth Perspectives in a Changing World.” The summit coincides with the 81st UN General Assembly (UNGA) High-level Week and is co-led by the SNF Global Center’s Global Youth Advisory Council (GYAC), with members from Brazil, South Africa, and Greece.
Following the success of the inaugural summit, this year’s event will further bridge science, storytelling, and lived experience through breakout sessions, new research and evidence, interactive activations, networking, and notable guest appearances. The summit will bring together multidisciplinary experts, partners, and young leaders from many organizations, including UNICEF, McKinsey Health Institute, JED Foundation, and Grand Challenges. New this year, a series of workshops hosted in collaboration with United for Global Mental Health (UGMH) and the SNF Global Center Communicator Fellows will focus on advocacy, power-mapping, and communications, equipping participants with practical tools to strengthen mental health advocacy and drive change in their communities.
The summit will open with remarks by Child Mind Institute leaders Harold S. Koplewicz, MD, founding president and medical director, and Giovanni Abrahão Salum, MD, PhD, senior vice president of Global Programs, alongside Andreas Dracopoulos, co-president of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). Former Miss South Africa Shudufhadzo “Shudu” Musida will also make a special guest appearance. An Author, Advocate, Podcast Host, and UNFPA Global Champion for Women and Girls, Musida will lead a fireside chat with members of the GYAC, discussing her advocacy journey and their hopes for the future of youth mental health.
“What began as a platform for bringing people and organizations with shared visions together in conversation has grown into a forum for advancing ideas, strengthening partnerships, and translating priorities into joint action,” said Dr. Salum. “This year’s summit aims to deepen those connections while creating new opportunities for youth perspectives to inform research, policy, and solutions.”
Panel discussions moderated by young leaders from the GYAC will examine timely topics related to:
- The role of schools in supporting youth mental health
- The effects of stigma and misinformation
- Links between digital environments, such as social media and other communication channels, and youth mental health
- How youth-led innovation is helping reshape solutions that resonate with diverse young people worldwide
A highlight at this year’s event will feature a presentation by João Marcos Almeida dos Santos, winner of the Single Session Intervention (SSI) competition, a nationwide contest in Brazil launched at last year’s Summit in partnership with the Felipe Neto Institute. The competition challenged young people aged 16-20 to develop solutions for healthier technology habits. Additionally, a dedicated youth networking session will offer an opportunity for participants to connect, build skills, and exchange ideas.
As part of the SNF Global Center’s commitment to advancing partnerships for lasting change, McKinsey Health Institute will present their latest report with World YMCA on the “Community Well-Being Case for Change” that examines topics such as strategic opportunities in well-being literacy as well as early awareness and preventative support. McKinsey Health Institute is an organization dedicated to advancing human health globally by catalyzing the actions and investment needed across continents and sectors.
To learn more about the Global Summit on Youth Mental Health, watch the highlights from the inaugural event in 2025.
About the SNF Global Center at the Child Mind Institute
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute brings together the Child Mind Institute’s expertise as a leading independent nonprofit in children’s mental health and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s deep commitment to supporting collaborative projects to improve access to quality health care worldwide. The center is building partnerships to drive advances in under-researched areas of children and adolescents’ mental health, and expand access to culturally appropriate training, resources, and treatment in low- and middle-income countries. This work is conducted by the Child Mind Institute with support from SNF through its Global Health Initiative (GHI).
About the Child Mind Institute
The Child Mind Institute is the leading nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of children and families experiencing mental health and learning disorders. Since its founding in 2009, the Child Mind Institute has become a global institution reaching millions of families each year through excellence in evidence-based clinical care, renowned educational resources and training, and science to advance the next generation of treatment.
Visit the Child Mind Institute on social media: Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn
For press questions, contact us at childmindinstitute@ssmandl.com or mediaoffice@childmind.org.
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Neural encoding of auditory processing in schizophrenia
IntroductionAuditory processing abnormalities are a core feature of schizophrenia and are linked to deficits in speech perception, cognitive function, and everyday communication. It remains unclear which stages of auditory processing are most disrupted and how these disruptions relate to symptoms at the level of population-wide neural representations.MethodsWe used fMRI recordings acquired while individuals with schizophrenia and matched healthy controls completed a controlled block-design speech-perception task. Voxel-wise encoding models mapped self-supervised speech-model representations, together with complementary acoustic and linguistic features, to neural responses.ResultsAcross cross-validated evaluations, individuals with schizophrenia showed numerically higher encoding alignment than matched controls across all evaluated regions of interest, although no effect survived false discovery rate correction in this small sample. The largest numerical group differences occurred in frontal language regions, including the middle frontal gyrus and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and in early auditory cortex. Subgroup analyses suggested that patients without auditory verbal hallucinations drove much of this numerical separation.DiscussionThese descriptive, hypothesis-generating findings suggest that model-based encoding can reveal a frontal-auditory signature in schizophrenia, but they do not establish a clinically actionable biomarker or preserved or enhanced speech encoding. Larger, adequately powered studies with richer feature spaces are needed for confirmatory inference and to test whether encoding-based measures can serve as clinically meaningful biomarkers.
Improving family functioning and wellbeing among families of children with disabilities in Rwanda: an application of the SAFE child protection model
BackgroundFamilies of children with disabilities in low-resource settings face heightened challenges to family functioning and wellbeing. Improving a child and caregiver’s environment in these settings requires a broader understanding of the family ecosystem. This study aims to investigate factors that should be considered to enhance family functioning and inform family-centered interventions.MethodologyWe conducted 34 in-depth interviews with 30 caregivers of children with disabilities aged 6–8 years enrolled in a larger cluster randomized trial of the Sugira Muryango parenting intervention. Additionally, six focus group discussions were conducted with 36 community workers, and 6 Early Childhood Developmental (ECD) advocates participants. Guided by the SAFE Model for child protection, content analysis was used to understand threats to child protection and caregivers’ well-being among caregivers of children with disabilities enrolled in Sugira Muryango.ResultsConsistent with the domains outlined in the SAFE Model, our analysis revealed the following threats to child safety: 1) Safety/Freedom from harm, including father’s mental health and substance abuse, abandonment and stigma related to a child’s disability; 2) Access to basic physiological needs and healthcare, including lack of basic necessities (food, utilities and housing), additional needs related to caring for a child with disabilities, caregiver mental health needs, limited access to health insurance and mother illness; 3) Family and connection to others, including the single-parent dilemma, lack of support from family and community, and father abandonment; and 4) Education and economic security, including additional expenses due to the child’s disability and financial stress related to health care costs.ConclusionImproving family functioning and wellbeing among caregivers of children with disabilities in limited resources requires a deep understanding of socioecological forces operating on the family system. These findings provide further evidence of how the threats to child safety highlighted by the SAFE Model can inform how researchers, and policy makers design and implement family-centered interventions tailored to children with disabilities in low-resource settings.
Screening and Monitoring of Mental Health in Educational Settings: Programme for Detection, Psychoeducation and Self-help
Conditions: Anxiety; Depression Disorder; Bullying; Addiction; Suicide; Self Harm; Psychosis; Eating Disorders
Interventions: Other: program for the detection, referral, and psychoeducation in adolescents
Sponsors: Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de la Fundación Jiménez Díaz; Hospital Universitario Rey Juan Carlos; Hospital Universitario Infanta Elena; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental
Completed
Interventions: Other: program for the detection, referral, and psychoeducation in adolescents
Sponsors: Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de la Fundación Jiménez Díaz; Hospital Universitario Rey Juan Carlos; Hospital Universitario Infanta Elena; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental
Completed
Comparisons of the structure and function of higher cortical circuits in marmosets and macaques: Models for mental health disorders
Non-human primates are extremely valuable for neuroscience research due to their strong homology to humans. Marmosets are small, highly social primates, amenable to genetic and circuit manipulations. Macaques, a larger and more aggressive primate, have been the non-human primate model of choice for decades, particularly for studying cognition. Comparative structural and functional studies have begun to reveal important similarities and differences between these models, shedding new light on their respective strengths and limitations for modeling psychiatric disorders.
[Corrections] Correction to Lancet Public Health 2026; 11: e506–17
Gustafsson T T, Pauly V, Hamina A, et al. Cause-specific mortality due to physical illness in severe mental disorders in Europe: a population-based multi-country cohort study. Lancet Public Health 2026; 11: e506–17—In this Article, the spelling of Coralie Gandré’s name has been corrected in the list of EU-MIND Consortium Collaborators. The collaborator group list and the appendix have been updated as of Aug 18, 2026.
[Editorial] The long walk to antipsychotic availability
The provision of medicines to all patients in need is a worthy goal but one that is rarely met in mental health. A new initiative from MedAccess and the Clinton Health Access Initiative plans to build on successes in disease areas such as HIV and contraception to address this challenge.
Association of Herpes Simplex Virus Type-1 With Dementia Outcomes: Longitudinal Retrospective Cohort Study Using Real-World Electronic Health Record Data
Background: Global dementia cases, currently exceeding 55 million, are projected to triple by 2050. In the absence of disease-modifying therapies, identifying modifiable risk factors is critical. Preclinical studies show that herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1) is neurotropic and can drive amyloid-beta accumulation and tau hyperphosphorylation. Epidemiologic findings remain inconsistent, partly because many studies lack standardized designs for real-world data. Objective: To quantify the association between clinically coded HSV-1 diagnosis and incident cognitive impairment or dementia among patients receiving care in a health-system electronic health record (EHR) network. Methods: We assembled a retrospective cohort within an Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP)–mapped EHR data lake (2010‐2024), comparing patients with a first HSV-1 diagnosis (n=6274) to those without HSV-1 codes but with parallel baseline criteria (n=379,975). Eligibility required at least 365 days of prior observation and absence of baseline cognitive, HIV, selected neurotropic viral, or recent transplant codes. The outcome combined mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRD). A high-dimensional propensity score (PS) incorporating approximately 17,000 baseline covariates was estimated with regularized logistic regression; 4 strata weights were applied in a Cox model. Sensitivity analyses examined equipoise trimming, doubly adjusted models, fixed 1-, 5-, and 10-year censoring horizons, and a dementia-only outcome subset. Negative-control outcomes (n=271) were prespecified to assess empirical calibration. Results: The HSV-1 cohort contributed 23,186 person-years (PY) and 469 events; the non-HSV-1 cohort contributed 1,519,827 PY and 24,764 events. Crude incidence was 20.23 (95% CI 18.44‐22.14) per 1000 PY in the HSV-1 cohort and 16.29 (95% CI 16.09‐16.50) in the non-HSV-1 cohort, an absolute difference of 3.94 events per 1000 PY. PS-stratified analysis yielded a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.14 (95% CI 1.03‐1.25; =.007). Estimates were comparable after equipoise trimming (HR 1.12, 95% CI 1.01‐1.25, =.04), doubly adjusted modeling (HR 1.13, 95% CI 1.02‐1.24, =.01), and fixed 5-year (=.008) and 10-year follow-up (=.004) (both HR 1.15). The 1-year censored model showed HR 1.00 (95% CI 0.84‐1.20; =.96). The dementia-only endpoint mirrored the primary analysis (HR 1.14, 95% CI 1.03‐1.25; =.008). No postindex events occurred for any negative-control outcome, so empirical calibration could not be performed and all estimates are uncalibrated. Conclusions: Within an OMOP-standardized EHR cohort, an HSV-1 diagnosis was associated with a small elevation in the hazard of subsequent cognitive impairment or dementia compared with individuals with no recorded HSV-1 diagnosis. Given the ubiquity of HSV-1, even a modest elevation in individual hazard could translate to a meaningful population-level increment if the association is causal. Confirmation in external data sets with laboratory viral typing, antiviral treatment records, and mortality linkage is warranted.
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Emerging Adults’ Experiences of Digital Measurement-Based Care in Routine Mental Health Care: Qualitative Study and Conceptual Synthesis
Background: Emerging adults (aged 18‐29 years) experience a high burden of mental health (MH) concerns during a developmental period marked by increasing autonomy and vulnerability to symptom onset. Many emerging adults face challenges in accessing and sustaining engagement with developmentally appropriate care. Digital measurement-based care (dMBC), which involves the routine use of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), has been introduced as an approach to support emerging adult engagement and improve responsiveness of care through ongoing monitoring and informed clinical decision-making. However, its integration into routine care remains variable, and there is limited understanding of how emerging adults experience and engage with dMBC in practice. Objective: This study aimed to examine how emerging adults experience dMBC within routine MH care and identify factors relevant to its use and integration in clinical practice. Methods: Using a descriptive qualitative design, semistructured interviews were conducted with 23 purposively sampled emerging adults who were either actively receiving care or had recently been discharged from 1 of 2 outpatient MH clinics in southern Alberta, Canada. dMBC was delivered through a web-based platform that enabled emerging adults to complete PROMs and view their results, which were also available to clinicians to inform care. All participants completed PROMs at baseline, with subsequent completion varying across participants and over the course of care. Interview data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Four interconnected themes were identified and synthesized into a higher-level conceptual representation of emerging adults’ experiences with dMBC: technology, tracking, translation, and therapeutic guidance. Technology captured participants’ varied experiences with accessing and using the digital platform, including its usability and accessibility. Tracking reflected how monitoring PROM results over time supported reflection on changes in MH. Translation described how PROM data were interpreted and incorporated into therapeutic discussions, while therapeutic guidance reflected the role of clinician involvement in supporting the use of dMBC in care. Across the themes, participants described variation in the relevance and burden of measurement and in how consistently dMBC was integrated into clinical care. Conclusions: Emerging adults’ experiences of dMBC were shaped by both their interactions with digital measurement and the integration of PROMs into routine MH care. The findings highlight the importance of considering dMBC within the broader therapeutic context in which measurement occurs, rather than as a stand-alone digital activity. The conceptual synthesis provides a way of organizing these experiences and can inform future research and implementation efforts focused on the use of dMBC in emerging adult MH services.
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