Review of the literature

Key messages • Mental health interventions increasingly build on the opportunities provided by new digital technologies. • An increasing number of studies show that digital approaches have the potential to address the mental health and wellbeing difficulties of young people – for example, reducing depression and anxiety or helping to detect emerging mental disorders among adolescents. • However, most studies on digital approaches and mental health centre on the Global North, and there are gaps in knowledge about how technology can be used to support adolescents in lowand middle-income countries. • It is important that a range of actors are included when designing, implementing and evaluating digital approaches to young people’s mental health, and that inequalities of access (mediated by factors such as gender, age, socioeconomic background and location) are addressed. Digital approaches to adolescent mental health A review of the literature