The Mission of the UCD Academic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Group (UCD-ACAP) is to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and families through research, education, advocacy and communication.

Members of the UCD-ACAP are passionate about communicating knowledge of child and adolescent mental health to professionals in education and other areas of health as well as parents.

We aim to lead the field nationally and internationally in child and adolescent mental health research, education and advocacy by  

• Researching to a world-class standard in child and adolescent mental health
• Delivering excellent undergraduate and graduate education in child and adolescent mental health
• Providing excellence in education for child and adolescent mental health professionals
• Transforming knowledge of child and adolescent mental health among parents, carers and support groups, though education
• Developing and hosting high quality conferences, master-classes, and certificates in child and adolescent mental health, and
• Developing, identifying and hosting high quality child and adolescent mental health web-based resources for young people, parents, teachers, clinicians and the general public 
• Advocating for excellence in service delivery using and evaluating evidence based clinical care.
• Contributing to policy documents on youth and family mental health
• Advocating for psycho-social support to front line clinicians providing mental health services to children and families