Brazilian public TV channel spotlights partnership that will foster research on mental health

Good news travels fast—and that is why the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute is gaining ground in the Brazilian media. Shortly after the announcement of a transformative initiative to address the country’s severe youth mental health crisis, the topic became the focus of Jornal da Tarde, a news program on TV Cultura, the public television network of the state of São Paulo, which aired an in-depth interview with psychiatrist Guilherme Polanczyk. In the interview, he explains the importance of the project and outlines its key elements.

“The first step toward providing care for those who need it is understanding the reality on the ground. And it’s striking how we still lack data, on a scale that truly represents the Brazilian population, about children and adolescents who need mental health care. The data we have are very localized, concentrated in states such as São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, and mostly in the Southeast,” Polanczyk said. “So the first initiative will be to study a sample that represents the entire country. All cities will be represented in some way, so that we can understand how many children and adolescents are affected, and what those problems are.” Below, you can watch the full interview.

The project is the result of a Brazilian-led coalition anchored at the Center for Research and Innovation in Mental Health (CISM) at the University of São Paulo and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), in partnership with the SNF Global Center.

The partnership involves approximately R$23 million (around US$4.3 million), split evenly between FAPESP and the SNF Global Center. This investment represents a significant expansion of CISM’s work, with the creation of a new research module dedicated to advancing science, strengthening data infrastructure, and expanding the delivery of mental health care for children and young people in Brazil.

Read more about this initiative.