Colloques du Collège de France - Collège de France

Maria Melchior

Santé publique

Collège de France

Année 2025-2026

Colloque - Mental Health and Addiction - Marit Sijbrandij: New Directions in Mental Healthcare at the Population Level

Session 3: Adults

Marit Sijbrandij

Full professor Clinical Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Résumé

Recent global crises, including armed conflicts, natural disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to substantial increases in mental health problems among affected populations. Individuals with refugee or migrant backgrounds are disproportionately exposed to these adversities while often facing significant barriers in accessing evidence based mental health care. In this presentation, Marit Sijbrandij will review evidence on scalable, low intensity psychological interventions delivered by trained non specialist providers to address symptoms of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder. She will highlight findings from studies conducted in both low- and middle-income countries and high income settings. Finally, she will discuss pathways for implementing these interventions at scale to improve mental health and daily functioning among populations experiencing adversity.

Maria Melchior

Santé publique

Collège de France

Année 2025-2026

Colloque - Mental Health and Addiction - Eric Bui: The Impact of Trauma and Loss: From Posttraumatic Stress Disorder to Prolonged Grief Disorder

Session 3: Adults

Eric Bui

Professor of Psychiatry, University of Caen Normandy & Caen University Hospital

Résumé

Exposure to a major life event may trigger the development of a stressor-related disorder, such as posttraumatic stress disorder and prolonged grief disorders occur. This presentation will review our line of research on the prediction and effective treatments of these conditions. The role of environmental factors across the lifespan will also be discussed.

Maria Melchior

Santé publique

Collège de France

Année 2025-2026

Colloque - Mental Health and Addiction - Mauricio Avendano: The Role of Mental Health in Shaping Education and Economic Outcomes for Young People: Findings from Randomized Trials

Session 3: Adults

Mauricio Avendano

Professor, Lausanne University; Adjunct Associate Professor, Harvard University; Visiting Professor, King's College London

Résumé

An increasing body of research suggests that mental health is associated with children's, adolescents', and young adults' ability to succeed in education and future employment. However, whether interventions that improve mental health translate into better educational, employment and economic outcomes remains less well established, partly due to challenges in identifying causal relationships. In this presentation, I argue that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of novel mental health interventions can help address this question. I focus on the results of a major RCT evaluating the impact of a digital mental health intervention among vulnerable young adults in Colombia. The findings show that while such interventions can improve mental health outcomes in this population, translating these improvements into gains in educational attainment and economic outcomes is more challenging than often assumed. This presentation raises broader questions about the role of experimental research in mental health and invites reflection on common assumptions regarding the pathways linking mental health to education and economic outcomes.

Maria Melchior

Santé publique

Collège de France

Année 2025-2026

Colloque - Mental Health and Addiction - Emmanuel Cohen: Modernity, Urbanization and Youth Mental Health Globally

Session 2: Young adults

Emmanuel Cohen

Researcher, UMR 7206 "Eco-anthropologie", CNRS

Résumé

A main actual challenge is to explore holistically the determinants of psychosocial distress in young people experiencing the urban transition. The young people's health is a priority in modern societies where psychosocial distress can be associated with chronic unemployment, criminality and suicide, especially in socially excluded and disadvantaged populations, as working classes and ethnic minorities. However, the main poor aspects of the modern lifestyle, e.g. individualism, consumerism and chronic poverty, are spreading around the world with variable degrees according to the insertion into the industrialization process of each country. From this perspective, the goal of our international collaboration between France, South Africa and Senegal is to provide new insights on the determinants of psychosocial distress in young people from socially disadvantaged urban areas, including jointly material aspects as chronic poverty and relational aspects as individualism and social isolation. Instead of adopting a restrictive conception of poverty, the major innovative approach of this collaboration is to confront together all aspects of a "poor life" including material, affective and social lacks involved in the development of psychosocial distress in young people living in socially excluded urban areas. Our project will be presented during this speaking.

Maria Melchior

Santé publique

Collège de France

Année 2025-2026

Colloque - Mental Health and Addiction - Naja Hulvej Rod: Early Life Adversity and Mental Health in Young Adulthood

Session 2: Young adults

Naja Hulvej Rod

Professor, Director, Copenhagen Health Complexity Center, University of Copenhagen

Résumé

Childhood adversities like poverty, parental separation, and parental illness are linked to lifelong social disadvantage and poor health. Mental health problems play a key role in maintaining this, especially during the stressful transition to young adulthood with its major life changes, such as entering the workforce. The talk explores the early origins and intergenerational transmission of mental health issues in this critical life phase.

Maria Melchior

Santé publique

Collège de France

Année 2025-2026

Colloque - Mental Health and Addiction - Emilie Courtin: The Impact of Family Policies on the Mental Health of Children's Caregivers

Session 1: Children

Emilie Courtin

Associate Professor, London School of Economics

Résumé

Parental leave policies have been hypothesized to benefit parents' mental health. I will present recent evidence on the optimal duration of leave, which subgroups might benefit most and future research directions.

Maria Melchior

Santé publique

Collège de France

Année 2025-2026

Colloque - Mental Health and Addiction - David Taylor-Robinson: Tackling Inequalities in Child Mental Health. The Importance of Addressing Poverty and Adversity

Session 1: Children

David Taylor-Robinson

Professor, University of Liverpool

Résumé

Improving child health and reducing health inequalities is a priority for public health. There are large inequalities in child health between and within countries in Europe. Generally speaking, the causes of these health inequalities are the same across different countries, and reflect differences between socioeconomic groups in poverty, power and resources needed for health; exposure to health damaging environments; and differences in opportunities to enjoy positive health factors, importantly giving children the best start in life. We know that socio-economic disadvantage worsens child health, and poor child health tracks forward to influence health and development in later life. Thus a life course perspective is particularly important when developing public policies. In this lecture I'll present an overview of the work we've been involved with to better understand pathways to inequalities in child mental health across a range of datasets; and our work to influence policies to improve child health outcomes, for instance our work on post-COVID recovery through the "Child of the North" initiative.

Maria Melchior

Santé publique

Collège de France

Année 2025-2026

Collque - Mental Health and Addiction: Understanding Determinants to Improve Population Well-Being

Maria Melchior

Épidémiologiste, professeure invitée du Collège de France

Le colloque est en anglais.

The workshop will address factors associated with population-level mental health and addiction risk across the lifecourse, with a specific focus on social determinants shaped by economic, societal, and political structures that surround our lives. Observational and interventional studies which point to ways of better understanding and addressing mental health needs in childhood, adolescence, in adulthood, and throughout aging across multiple settings will be described and discussed and brought together in a multidisciplinary framework. Research covered will come from the fields of epidemiology, psychiatry, economics, politics, and sociology, integrating a community-driven perspective to gain insight into possible headways to improve mental health and reduce addictive behaviours on a large scale.

Édouard Bard

Collège de France

Évolution du climat et de l'océan

Année 2025-2026

Session 2: Global Geodynamics of the Earth

Frozen in Pieces: The Challenge of Plate Tectonic Reconstructions of a Fragmented Arctic

Intervenant(s)

Carmen Gaina

Université Oslo

Édouard Bard

Collège de France

Évolution du climat et de l'océan

Année 2025-2026

Session 2: Global Geodynamics of the Earth

Mass Structure of the Convecting Mantle: Constraints Using Satellite Gravity Data

Intervenant(s)

Isabelle Panet

IGN, IPGP, Université Paris Cité