Historically large donation from foundations to the mental healthcare services in the North Denmark Region will ensure rapid and targeted action for children and adolescents with mental health problems

The Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Obel Family Foundation have awarded grants totalling DKK 180 million to the mental healthcare services in the North Denmark Region – the largest grant from Danish foundations targeting children and adolescents affected by mental distress or mental illness. The project will find new ways to ensure more rapid diagnosis and improved treatment for the target group, and the ambition is to develop a concept that can later be disseminated to Denmark’s other administrative regions.

Mental distress and mental illness are serious social problems in Denmark. The proportion of children and adolescents in contact with the mental healthcare services for children and adolescents has increased by more than 50% in the past decade, and 15% of all children and adolescents receive a psychiatric diagnosis before becoming 18 years old.

This puts pressure on the municipalities and the healthcare system, and families often experience that the help provided for their children and adolescents arrives too late or is not appropriate – and this ultimately strongly affects many people’s lives and the economy as a whole.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Obel Family Foundation have therefore joined with the mental healthcare services in the North Denmark Region to establish a partnership for one of the most ambitious projects related to mental healthcare services for children and adolescents. The project is called Best for Us, and the DKK 180 million allocated over a five-year period comprises the largest grant from Danish foundations targeting children and adolescents affected by mental distress or mental illness.

Solving the challenge
As a partner, the North Denmark Region will contribute significant resources to the project. Regional Council Chair Mads Duedahl (Liberal Party) is proud that the North Denmark Region has been asked to develop and implement such an ambitious development project that can inspire Denmark’s other administrative regions and municipalities and thereby help to improve the well-being of children and adolescents throughout Denmark.

“The increasing mental distress and mental illness among children and adolescents have increased the pressure on regional and municipal healthcare services, and we have difficulty in keeping up and offering rapid and sufficient help. I hope that this project can help to solve the challenge so that we can offer more rapid investigation and more and better treatment to children and adolescents, thereby lifting the whole family out of the crisis that arises when mental illness affects a child.”

Close interdisciplinary collaboration
Best for Us builds on the experience from a similar project in the United Kingdom. Although the overall aim is to develop new methods to lead to more effective and coherent efforts, initiatives will already be launched from day one to ensure more rapid investigation and better treatment for children, adolescents and their families.

Jan Mainz, Professor and Executive Director of Psychiatry in the North Denmark Region, is heading Best for Us and says that closer dialogue and collaboration between the various professions is absolutely key to the project.

“An important aspect will be actively involving all relevant actors and jointly developing services that will make a real difference. This includes children, adolescents and parents and professionals from the municipalities, regional mental healthcare services and general practice,” says Jan Mainz, emphasising that the project will function in accordance with the objectives of Denmark’s 10-year plan for strengthening mental healthcare.

The family in focus
Best for Us will focus on the whole family, and a key new initiative is establishing family teams, which will include professionals from schools, the municipality and the mental healthcare services for children and adolescents in addition to the child or adolescent and the parents. The family team continually organises and coordinates the trajectory of each individual child or adolescent.

“When a child or adolescent is distressed, the whole family is affected. The family must therefore be in focus to jointly create an inclusive and coherent pathway for each child or adolescent,” explains Jan Mainz.

In addition, Best for Us envisions a key role for digital solutions – again with the family in focus.

A digital platform will be developed to gather all information about the pathway of the child or adolescent in the mental health care services for children and adolescents. This gives the families rapid and easy access to the information they need and strengthens the sharing of knowledge between the various actors involved in the process.

In addition, an app for parents will be created in collaboration with Denmark’s other administrative regions that can help the parents while their child is on the waiting list.

Foundations aim to make a difference for children and adolescents in mental distress
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has awarded a grant of up to DKK 150 million and the Obel Family Foundation is contributing DKK 30 million to Best for Us. Both foundations have high expectations for the partnership and the project’s potential.

“Best for Us is a unique initiative, and we have high expectations that all the actors involved will create noticeable improvement for children and adolescents with mental distress and their families. In addition to creating new knowledge and developing new solutions, we want the project to create change in leading to more rapid investigation and improved treatment options,” says Flemming Konradsen, Senior Vice President, Social & Humanitarian, Novo Nordisk Foundation.

Gustav Mellentin, Chair of the Obel Family Foundation, also emphasises the necessity and importance of the project and that it is a regional project in the North Denmark Region with national ambitions.

“We are very pleased to join the partnership behind Best for Us, because the project really focuses on the key people: children and adolescents and their families. It is an ambitious effort to find new ways to improve mental healthcare for children and adolescents based on research and positive experiences from outside Denmark. One key aspect is ensuring that the actors are committed across sectors, which is absolutely crucial, since we now know that the challenges children and adolescents with mental distress face are so complex that they must be solved through close collaboration.”

Facts
Best for Us…

• is a five-year project supported by up to DKK 150 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation and DKK 30 million from the Obel Family Foundation;
• will generate concrete solutions for how the objectives related to mental healthcare services for children and adolescents in Denmark’s 10-year plan for strengthening mental healthcare can be achieved;
• gives the North Denmark Region the opportunity to optimise the physical framework in mental healthcare services for children and adolescents to create a greater sense of security and closeness for the children and adolescents being treated;
• is anchored in the North Denmark Region, where professional actors in municipalities and schools, general practitioners and civil society will work closely together to improve the services for children and adolescents in mental distress and undergoing treatment;
• will have four municipalities in the North Denmark Region – Aalborg, Hjørring, Mariagerfjord and Thisted – as primary municipal partners, but the region’s other municipalities are also involved, and Aalborg University is a key collaborator in the research part of the project;
• has been developed with input from the Mental Health Foundation Denmark;
• will closely collaborate with other relevant actors at the national level to ensure that the project is disseminated outside the North Denmark Region; and
• has the Lundbeck Foundation contributing a further grant of DKK 11.6 million for the subproject Challenge Young, which will investigate whether virtual reality technology can be useful for the targeted treatment of adolescents with mental disorders for which there are currently no good treatments.