Abstract: The mental health of child, adolescent and youth is probably a continuum from a child development perspective – normal and abnormal, evolution of problems, causative and risk factors and ultimately the outcome. Any retrospective search for cause, is likely to be biased. It is said that many of the adult psychiatric disorders have their onset in adolescence. Mental health issues of adolescents have to be addressed in the primary care set-up itself, because there are far too many children and adolescents with behavioural, emotional and mental health problems in the community and only limited number of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and trained counsellors are available.