We ran a survey open to all 16-25-year-olds in Greater Manchester asking what were the problems surrounding youth mental health they wanted to talk about. These were the four issues that were mentioned most often:

1. Excessive reliance on medication and insufficient personalised assistance
2. Insufficient inclusion of mental health education in schools/ colleges/ universities and the workplace, which makes stigma around mental illness worse
3. Inadequate recognition of the influence of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds on youth mental health
4. Limited diversity among mental health professionals, which means many young people from different ethnic backgrounds feel their experience is not understood and validated

We invited proposals from young people and we then ran two online dialogues to discuss and prioritise proposals.

Proposal prioritisation during the online dialogue with young people