PREVENT

The PREVENT (Promoting Emotional Well-being via Family Support in Adolescence Using Non-specialists) program is a family support innovation designed to improve adolescent mental health in Pakistan by equipping caregivers with culturally adapted, positive parenting strategies. It addresses two core challenges: strict parenting styles and limited emotional support at home, both of which place adolescents at greater risk of poor mental health outcomes.

PREVENT pioneers Pakistan’s first scalable, school-integrated early intervention model for youth mental health. By shifting care from scarce clinical specialists to trained psychology graduates and teachers through a certified accreditation framework, it delivers evidence-based support. Combining adolescent skill-building with caregiver psychoeducation and partnership, PREVENT embeds stigma-free mental health care within schools, enabling early identification and timely assistance for at-risk youth.

Built on the WHO’s Early Adolescent Skills for Emotions (EASE) framework, trained non-specialist facilitators deliver group sessions that help adolescents understand emotions, manage stress, stay motivated through behavioural activation, solve problems, and communicate more effectively with caregivers. Additionally, caregivers learn positive parenting skills, such as active listening, praise, quality time, problem-solving, and caring for their own well-being, to create a supportive home environment.

With Transition-to-Scale funding, the project team aims to generate additional evidence to assess the impact of their parenting intervention and understand the effectiveness of using trained and certified non-specialist facilitators in scaling up the intervention.