21 May 2025

The seventh ‘Youth Mental Health International Conference’ by the International Association of Youth Mental Health (IAYMH) was held in Vancouver, Canada in March 2025. The theme for this years’ conference was ‘Creating a global blueprint for and integrated care in Youth Mental Health’.

Mary McNicholas, a Consultant Psychologist based at the Harrow Community Mental Health Hub (CMHH), was invited to present her quality improvement project and represent CNWL.
 

As well as being a Consultant Psychologist, Mary is also a dialectical behaviour therapist (DBT) and supervisor. In 2024, she submitted a quality improvement (QI) project entitled ‘Bitesize Skills – Building the Road Ahead’. This project sought to improve access to the Harrow Community Mental Health Hub (CMHH) for 18 to 24-year-olds by creating an eight-week intervention programme based around the National Institute for Health and Care (NICE) and Dialectal Behavioural Therapy (DBT). 

The project was the only frontline intervention selected to be presented at the conference; highlighting the success of the project and the involvement of different disciplines within the CMHH. What made Mary’s project garner lots of interest was the timeframe of the intervention and collaborative working approach.

The collaborative working approach included other groups such as Psychologists, Family Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Pharmacists, Employment and Volunteering specialists. Together with third sector organisations, it provided an effective treatment process.

You can read more on Mary’s project here. Well done Mary on your hard work!