Reacción a "Reactions: how to make cities that care for young people's mental health"

The article addresses the highly important and timely topic of supporting the mental health of adolescents and young adults. Unlike many published articles, the methods and content provide a breadth of ideas for future research ideas and for policy makers. Importantly, the research team engaged a variety of stakeholders—from youth themselves, to those working in urban planning and other fields supporting the work of healthy cities. The results would have been even more useful if there had been more reflection on the differences in responses between these stakeholders. 

A critical backdrop to the study, which is not featured prominently enough in the title, abstract and conclusions of the article, is that the data collection took place toward the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the context of the pandemic is discussed, it deserves more focus and reflection regarding how the time period may have affected the results of the study, even statements not related directly to the pandemic, particularly in regard to mental health and even more so in regard to the mental health of adolescents and young adults. 

One of the most important observations of the authors is one that is often identified as important, but which mostly eludes our abilities as public health practitioners. This is the need to address structural social inequities which result not just in inequities in mental health outcomes among young adults and adolescents (the topic of the article) but in all kinds of health inequities and other injustices across the age spectrum.