A global mental health crisis is threatening a generation of young people with a lifetime of symptoms that do not fit neatly into diagnostic systems. Optimal decisions regarding treatments, services, research, and policies are critically needed, yet such decisions are based on idiosyncratic categorization of clinical courses. This review suggests clinical staging approaches may unite mental health stakeholders around shared targets to reduce mental illness. It first presents key approaches to clinical staging and then outlines how clinical knowledge has been translated into a unified transdiagnostic staging heuristic and clinical service structure over the past 30 years. Directions for short-, medium-, and long-term action are recommended with global community engagement. With investment from the mental health community, staging could reduce suffering through the use of an ethical, organized, and targeted system of communication.