Mental Health and Youth Work Youth workers share on Mental Health
Each section of this document shows the results of a group brainstorming.
Introduction On the 30th of April 2021, Youth Express Network held an online meeting entitled: « Mental Health and Youth Work ». This meeting aimed at gathering youth workers and volunteers in order to exchange and brainstorm on the topic of Mental Health, in general, as well as in the specific context of youth work. The meeting gathered 9 youth workers coming from different European countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom). The idea was to discuss in an informal way, share from one’s personal and professional experience, reflect all together on the current reality of Mental Health, without necessarily reaching for any form of expertise. This document recollects the thoughts and ideas shared between the participants of the meeting. This reflexion was led with a « post-it » board method: personal reflexion > group restitution > open discussion. Have a good read!
The youth workers wrote with a few words the ideas that cross their minds after being asked each question. The quotes come from the debriefings and group reflections that followed each reflection.
Index QUESTION 1 In your opinion, what does Mental Health include? QUESTION 2 What kind of issues related to Mental Health are young people facing around you? QUESTION 3 How can we support Young People's mental wellbeing? - Sharing tools or activities QUESTION 4 Things you do to take care of your mind? Any self-care routine tips?
Body and mind Inner harmony or disharmony General body health State of mind
QUESTION 1
Emotions
Inner peace Psychological, emotional, social wellbeing
In your opinion, what does Mental Health include? Thoughts
« In my personal life, mental health implies a combination of my psychological, emotional, social and cognitive wellbeing. » « When I think about my mental health, I think about body health in general because the body and mind connection is crucial for my personal mental wellbeing. It’s also about emotional support. Feeling supported and safe. »
Wellbeing
The outside Setting boundaries
Self-care
Calm, peace
Feeling supported
Self esteem
Emotional balance
Inside/emotional reaction to your surroundings (events or people)
Separating my personal and professional life
Relationship between oneself and their environment, the people around them
Conflict management Insecurities
Thoughts Thoughts « For me, the three pillars of my mental wellbeing are: feeling calm, setting boundaries and understanding and expressing my emotions. » « I wrote boundaries because for me, ensuring the balance in my Mental Health sometimes means saying no to things, or extracting myself from situations that I know will have a negative impact on me. »
« Mental health for me is individual, but also social and political. » « Sometimes, what we show to the outside doesn’t match how we feel in the inside and Mental Health for me is really about being able to find balance and feel at peace at all levels. » « Being proactive for my own mental wellbeing also contributes to the wellbeing of my community. »
Stigma
Mental illnesses are often misunderstood
Danger VS Safety Prejudice and stereotypes Fears
« The stigmas around Mental Health make it more difficult to raise awareness on the topic and to talk about it with the people around us. » « When I hear Mental Health, I am drawn to focus on the political aspect of it, so Fears and Stigma would be the words that cross my mind, because it is the topic I mostly work on within my organisation. »
Mental Health literacy
Thoughts « In each of our country, Mental Health is seen in a different way. It is attached to different levels of stigma or misinformation. It has a different visibility and accessibility. » « I think that it’s easy to stigmatise the word « Mental Health ». Here, where I live, mental health is perceived as a negative thing. If you talk about it, people automatically assume that you « Have mental health issues » and it’s viewed as a negative thing. And this situation puts you at risk for yourself, because the environment is not a safe space anymore for your own mental health. »
Promoting Mental Health, raising awareness
Understanding and expressing emotions
Thoughts « It’s important to understand emotions and how they work, how they impact Mental Health. And to be open about it, to be able to talk about it safely with family, friends and/or people around us. »
Pandemic
QUESTION 2 What kind of issues related to Mental Health are young people facing around you?
Not feeling supported by their government Lack of social life and human interactions
Isolation
Feeling unsafe
Being online constantly
Fear for themselves or their family and friends
Health and conditions
Stress
Stress about university, their studies, exams Body or mental illnesses
Pressure Body pain
Low levels of energy Depression
Expectations and pressure from the family (job, house, starting a family)
Uncertainties about the future (employment, environment…)
Eco-anxiety / Solastalgia
Trauma Not finding a job
Lack of support from their family / society
Anxiety
Self esteem
Feeling misunderstood
Lack of selfconfidence
Exposure to social media (unrealistic expectation)
Body dysmorphia
Bullying
Feeling unable to find safe-spaces to express their emotions Lack of a sense of belonging
Not being taken seriously by older people
Lack of Communication
Difficulty to find helpful resources
Thoughts of the youth workers
(right after brainstorming and writing on the challenges of Youth with Mental Health) « For me, it’s sad to see the amount of things that we mentioned. I’m surprised, although not entirely because these are issues I encounter when working with young people. It is still a shock. »
« We wrote these realities because it’s what is happening also to us or our friends, or people that we’re seeing online or offline. But it’s a reality and we have to accept it. » « I was feeling a bit distressed seeing how quickly we filled this board with issues that young people are facing. It gave me a physical reaction. »
« We were holding all of these emotions and thoughts in our heads and were just waiting for an opportunity to share it so this exercise made us really take it all out! »
Art and creativity
Expression through art
Music
QUESTION 3 How can we support Young People's Mental wellbeing? Sharing tools or activities
Keeping my hands busy
Offering new opportunities to open new horizons
Calm and introspection
Mind body practices (releasing emotions)
Breathing exercices
Mindfulness
Meditation on self-awareness
Professional help
List of professional contacts (Medical support, NGOs…)
List of local mental health related services (Help lines, support groups…)
Information on Mental Health
Deconstructing stigmas and stereotypes
Improving knowledge on selfcare and mental health
Online & offline workshops on Mental Health
Raising awareness
Using social media to raise awareness on mental health
Non-formal education
Ensuring safe spaces to communicate without prejudice or judgement
Create online and offline campaigns to promote mental health
Campaigns to raiseawareness on wellbeing and mental health
Documents and guides containing infos and tools (toolkits, toolboxes)
Training courses on psychological first aid
Sharing stories
Group support
Give the floor to young people, not only health experts
Show with our example that it’s okay not to be okay
Share positive stories and examples
Use Storytelling to help young people improve their self esteem
Create support groups and safe spaces Open up to family and friends, or professionnals
Organise group activities to encourage exchanges
Less online, more offline
Listening without judging
Be there for your closed ones, offer support
Thoughts of the youth workers
(right after brainstorming and writing on finding ways to support Youth with their mental health) « The solutions are often available in theory but they are within the government’s guidelines so in reality, they’re very difficult to access. From what I’ve seen when working with young people, the need is there but the journey to get to the support is just too complicated. People tend to turn their back and say, « I just can’t, it’s too hard ». Bridging the gap is the missing point. »
« It’s interesting to see that it’s not even easy to talk about it in a safe-space. For example, I felt a little bit self-conscious sharing my tools and methods on the post-it, because I know that meditation and Mind Body Practice is still not recognised or accepted by a lot of people, even though I truly believe they can help to promote social justice and social inclusion. »
« Where I live, the question of mental health can still be a little bit taboo and uncomfortable. People can still think it’s a little bit too sensitive and personal to share about their mental health. When it comes to organising youth events, I think that the important thing is to keep the mental wellbeing of young people in mind at all times, even if the activity is not specifically about mental health. »
« I think you need to be careful how deep you’re going when you are talking about this topic. On one side, if you are working on prevention or raising awareness on mental health, then yes, it is accessible. You can easily create accessible content, use videos, posters, memes, stories to convey your message. But on the other side, if you are working directly with people who have mental health issues, it becomes harder because you need to create a safe space and take care of their needs, in order to allow them to feel secure and free to express themselves.»
« We organised an online workshop on mental health last year. The online workshop was a success and a good amount of people participated, the event had positive results. But when we decided to transfer this workshop into an offline format, nobody applied and people didn’t show up. We thought that maybe people were afraid or felt uncomfortable with the new format, so we stopped the process and gave it more thoughts. Last month, we made another call and offered the same event on mental health, offline, but this time adding meditation and art, and we got a lot of applications! The workshops are currently being held regularly and half of the applicants are committed and come every time. Organising events on mental health can be a challenge and some people will react with hostility, misjudgment, fear or doubt. But ultimately, if you try and find the right gateway, you’re going to help a lot of people. »
« A few years ago, our organisation implemented a youth training on Storytelling. The main aim of the project was to empower young people through video storytelling and because the topic was so innovative, most of the young people we reached probably embarked on the journey for the coolness it showed on paper: travelling abroad, making friends from all over Europe and learning how to make cool videos… What they didn’t necessarily know or grasp at the time they applied was how rich this journey was going to be on a more personal level. Most of them focused their video on personal stories, heavy topics and big life milestones that invited some levels of introspection: formative, emotional and sometimes even traumatic pieces of their story. The project was amazing and everyone came back home with something positive: a new tool, new skills, good memories, but some of them also found some healing. Maybe one of the key way to reach young people and have an impact on how they handle their mental health is to promote the tool, the medium, the method, more than emphasizing on the label « Mental Health » that can be scary sometimes. »
« Sometimes, mentioning mental health can be offputting. Because people can think: OK but I don’t have a problem so this is not for me. But it is crucial that we learn tools, and gain literacy on mental health before challenges arise. Mental wellbeing is not always about curing conditions or solving problems. It can also be about prevention, taking care of your mental health a little bit everyday. »
« Our organisation is trying to launch a training course on a mental health first aid kit for youth workers, but it’s hard to find financial support, because institutions and public authorities seem to think that peer education and youth work don’t need these kind of skills. They consider that mental health is the responsibility of psychologists or psychiatrists, that youth workers do not have the legitimacy in this field. But we think that everyone should have access to mental health first aid kit: little exercices that can help you on a daily basis for daily struggles such as anxiety or stress for example. There’s still a long way to go. »
« Young people are taught to take care of their body: you have physical education, they teach you sports, nutrition, but it’s always from a physical perspective. I always wonder: why don’t we teach kids « It is okay to take 5 minutes in your day to ask yourself: Hey, who am I? How am I feeling now? Am I feeling angry? Am I anxious? Sad? »… I don’t see that anywhere, at least in my generation… And I would love to see that in the future. I think that mental health is something that should be taught at a young age. And when I say young I mean children. So that they can have a better understanding of themselves as individuals and of others, not only society but other individuals, people around you. With this would come more respect and empathy. »
Seek professional help and support groups
« I talk with my therapist, it helps me grow and improve »
QUESTION 4 Things you do to take care of your mind? Any self-care routine tips?
« I go to therapy twice a month » « I take part in group sharing »
Talk to your closed ones
« I call friends! (Active listening: support / Opening up: expressing emotions) » « I talk more with friends, reach out » « I spend quality time with my loved ones »
Express yourself through art and creativity « I create stuff, embroidery, video making, writing… » « I listen to music » « Handcrafting: I keep my hands busy » « I sing and express my thoughts when I walk »
Listen to your needs
Disconnect yourself from negative energies
« I disconnect from social media, distance myself from infobesity » « I don’t look at the news » « I cut all unnecessary info (news, media, source of information…) »
Set boundaries
« I take time to ask myself how I feel and what I need »
« I set boundaries in a lot of areas of my life »
« I give myself the space to feel sad, knowing that it is okay »
« I work less than past years and I try to set boundaries between my professional and personal life »
« When I feel emotional, I ask myself: where do I feel it in my body? So I express it, then I release it in the most creative way I feel like doing »
« I am learning to say NO, when I don’t have the resources for others. I practice self-care and self-love »
Take care of your body
Do something that makes you happy
« I do 1 minute exercices when I have long meetings (every two hours) »
« I cook and it makes me happy »
« I practice outdoor sports »
« I cook for my loved ones! »
« I check my heart beat, how is my breathing? »
« Chocolate! »
« I laugh! » « I practice breathing exercices » "I practice yoga and meditation, morning flow »
Take a break « I take a day off, go on a long week-end trip » « I take special time for myself »
Connect with nature and/or animals
« I take care of my garden » « I spend time in nature » « I pet my dog! »
« I take a bath (Sorry planet, promise it’s not often) »
« I walk in nature every single day »
« I pray in calm »
« I go outside with my dog »
Escape through Art « I read books and it helps me cope with my environment » « I watch videos online, content, creators, testimonies that make me feel inspired » « I look for motivational videos » « I read comics, watch tv series »
Going further
Survey on Youth & Covid: impacts on jobs, education, rights and mental wellbeing - European Youth Forum