Adolescents as Co-Designers: How Youth Perspectives Can Shape the Foundation for Mental Health Interventions in Northern Ghana.

Background: Adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face significant mental health challenges, yet their voices are often underrepresented in intervention design. Co-design approaches, such as human-centered design, offer a promising approach to tailor interventions to specific needs and context; however, this requires careful adaption in LMICs where resources, design experience, and cultural factors impact engagement and efficacy. This study documents how human-centered design was adapted to engage adolescents in co-designing a school-based mental health intervention, highlighting the contextualization of co-design methods to the Ghanaian sociocultural context and the unique participation of youth.