A call for mental health illiteracy : response to Samuel

Samuel (2020) raised a number of concerns about our advocacy for a national initiative to improve child mental health literacy (MHL; Viewpoints: ‘A national child mental health literacy initiative is needed to reduce childhood mental disorders’; Tully et al., 2019). In our article, we highlighted the lack of MHL regarding mental health disorders in children aged below 12 years and argued that to achieve increased uptake of professional help by those in need and to reduce stigma, a national initiative focussed on increasing child MHL was needed. Samuel’s commentary expressed three key concerns with a child MHL initiative: limited efficacy of available treatments, the negative impact of labelling disorders in children and the complexity of biopsychosocial explanations of mental disorders. While these issues are not central to the aims of increasing MHL (defined as improving knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid their recognition, management or prevention; Jorm et al., 1997), it is nevertheless important to respond to the concerns raised by Samuel.