Learning Circles – dialogues for adolescent mental health

Learning Circles is a joint initiative of the MHPSS Collaborative and UNICEF’s Adolescent Mental Health Hub, created to foster dialogue on urgent and often contested issues affecting adolescent mental health. Designed as a space for exchange rather than one-way presentation, Learning Circles bring together young people, practitioners, policymakers, researchers and advocates from diverse contexts to explore evidence, surface tensions and generate shared insight.

Each Learning Circle begins with short contributions from invited Catalysts, who help frame the issue through evidence, experience and practical examples. Participants then engage in facilitated dialogue to reflect on implications for policy, practice, research and the everyday lives of adolescents. Following each session, a synthesis document, The Circular, is published to capture the key messages, tensions and emerging pathways identified through the discussion.

Topics are selected based on what practitioners, policymakers and young people identify as most urgent in the current adolescent mental health landscape. The first Learning Circle focused on social media bans and their impacts on adolescent mental health, responding to growing international debate around age-based restrictions and the need for more nuanced, evidence-informed and equitable responses.

Through this initiative, the MHPSS Collaborative and UNICEF aim to create an ongoing platform for collective sensemaking: one that moves beyond polarized debate, centers lived experience alongside evidence and supports more thoughtful approaches to adolescent mental health and wellbeing.