Our Children are Our Future: Socio-economic Inequality and Child and Adolescent Mental Health

With our children being our future and our long-term societal wellbeing depending on them, Professor Kate Pickett and Professor Richard Wilkinson provide insight into their recent CAMH journal Editorial ‘Socio-economic inequality and child and adolescent mental health’. Richard and Kate are co-authors of the bestselling and award winning The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018). Described by Penguin as ‘the most influential and talked-about book on society in the last decade’, The Spirit Level won the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize and was the 2012 Publication of the Year of the Political Studies Association. The New Statesman listed it in the Top Ten Books of the Decade, and the Guardian among the 100 most influential books of the century.

Learning Objectives
1. The relationship between socio-economic inequality and child and adolescent mental health.
2. What causes the lack of good data in low-and-middle income data.
3. The pathways and mechanisms through which socio-economic inequality affects child and adolescent mental health.
4. The three ways in which inequality effects mental health.
5. The framework for how socio-economic inequalities between societies interacts with socio-economic positions within societies.
6. Issues of causality.
7. What can be done to mitigate the impact of income inequality on child and adolescent mental health.
8. Current gaps in the literature that would be fruitful to address.