Building the ecosystem for youth mental health and wellbeing in Pakistan

Nos Ecosystem Catalyst (EC) Grants help scale youth-led ideas, remove barriers to mental health prevention and promotion support, and test how youth-led innovation can work within and improve existing systems.

Ecosystem Building in Pakistan

Consultations revealed that while youth mental health interventions exist in Pakistan, they are mainly small-scale, with significant barriers to broader implementation. This presents an opportunity to strengthen implementation guidance and resources and increase advocacy at the national level to scale and sustain these initiatives.

The Ecosystem Catalyst Project

La British Asian Trust (BAT), in partnership with Bargad a youth-led organisation, and the Pakistan Mental Health Coalition (PMHC), will deliver a program that brings together two mutually reinforcing workstreams to transform the youth mental health landscape of Pakistan through an approach that amplifies youth leadership, builds community support, and prepares the sector for sustainable, results-based investment in mental health services. These streams are designed to be mutually reinforcing.

• La ecosystem stream will build momentum and demand through a national Youth Mental Health Network (YMHN) to influence public discourse and policy.
• In turn, the outcomes-based financing stream explores how this demand can be met through sustainable investment. Youth-defined priorities and the mapping of service providers and interventions from the ecosystem stream will feed directly into the financing design and create a feedback loop where youth engagement helps define the mental health outcomes, and the tools and evidence generated through the OBF process strengthen the relevance and impact of youth involvement in shaping future service delivery and policy.

Together, these two components aim to create a virtuous cycle rooted in youth voice, evidence, and partnerships that can drive lasting reform in youth mental health.