Best for Us aims to develop and implement a regionally anchored stepped care model to ensure improved and timely treatment for more children and young people with mental health problems and mental disorders.

Psychiatry in the North Denmark Region has received a historically large grant from the Novo Nordic Foundation and The Obel Family Foundation for a groundbreaking five-year project aiming to create better access, higher quality, and improved outcomes in the treatment of children and young people with mental health problems and mental disorders.
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Best for Us

What is Best for Us?

In this short film about Best for Us, you will meet Frida. Her story is one of many from children and young people who have been in contact with the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Frida is just one of the 15% who have received treatment within the psychiatric system for children and adolescents. This affects not only the children and young people themselves, but also their families. It is one of the most serious public health challenges, both nationally and internationally.

With Best for Us, our aim is to ensure that children, young people, and their families receive the right treatment, at the right level, and at the right time. In the film, you can learn more about who we are and what our vision is, but one thing is certain: our goal is to make the path to the right help easier, to strengthen cross‑sector collaboration, and to ensure that children, young people, and their families receive support earlier and of higher quality.

Key elements

“Within Best for Us, the whole family will be at the center of attention. When a child or young person is not thriving, the whole family is affected. Therefore, it is important to keep the whole family in focus, in order to collectively create an inclusive and cohesive clinical pathway.”

Jan Mainz, Program Director, Best for Us

“Best for Us is an ambitious effort to find new paths to better treatment of children and young people, based on research and positive experiences from abroad. A key element is that it obligates participants across sectors, which is crucial since we are no longer in doubt that the challenges among children and young people with mental health problems are so complex that they need to be solved in close cooperation.”

Gustav Mellentin, Chair of The Obel Family Foundation

Work Packages

Best for Us is organized into seven work packages, all intercorrelated and mutually supportive of the two general tracks within the project:

  • Improving the cohesiveness of efforts and treatments for children and young people with mental health problems and mental disorders.
  • Improved and timely within Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services – and in better time.

Increasingly more children and young people struggle with severe mental health problems. 

15% of children and young people are diagnosed with a mental health disorder before they turn 18.

The increasing demand puts pressure on both the municipal and the regional Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

Over 10 years there has been an increase of 49% in the share of children and young people who are in contact with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. 

It is challenging to be the parent of a child who struggles with severe mental health problems

6 out of 10 parents of referred children have experienced professionals not listening or not taking them seriously when they have reached out with concerns regarding their child.

Large geographical variations for children and young people with mental health problems. 

The percentage of students with mental health disorders who are in upper secondary education 15 months after their final examination in 9th grade, varies from 55% to 82% depending on the municipality.