Technical Note on Gender in Adolescent Mental Health

UNICEF’s Gender Action Plan 2018-2021 is road map to ensuring that all children enjoy equal rights, resources, opportunities, and protections. One of the key results expected from this plan is gender-responsive adolescent health with a vision of being gender transformative.

This means that UNICEF should be implementing programmes where the effects of gender norms, roles, and inequalities have been examined and measures have been taken to actively address the differentiated needs of all children, regardless of their gender. Ultimately, UNICEF aspires to address underlying power and structural inequalities and eliminate all forms of discrimination to achieve equal outcomes for all children. This technical note is designed to provide information on the relationship between gender and adolescent mental health and how to implement gender-responsive and gender-transformative adolescent-focused mental health and psychosocial programmes.