Let's Talk About Mental Health! - Online Seminar

Good mental health is fundamental for the quality of life, well-being and productivity of both individuals, families, workers and communities. It increases the strength and resilience of the society. Young people, as an essential part of society, need the space and resources to learn more, talk more and act more on the issues that are related with mental health.

Some youth workers find it hard to talk with young people on such issues; simply because they are worried that the topic might be upsetting, or that some personal or medical topics might come up during the conversation that they don’t know how to address. Talking about mental health from an early age on, helps the individuals to better understand their emotions and become more able to take care of themselves mentally and physically – which are equally essential. By talking and gaining more competences, we can stop feeding the social stigma around mental health, and also learn ways to resist the stigma when it shows up.

Aim of the Seminar

The main aim of this Seminar is to equip youth workers with knowledge, skills and attitude on how to address mental health issues and strengthen young people’s mental health.

The objectives are:

• To have a better understanding of mental health issues and how they relate to the life of a young person,
• To learn how to tackle stigma on mental health issues,
• To learn ways to support positive mental health through well-being, off and online.
• To learn more about public health sector and how systematic work within different settings as; local environment, schools and online affects physical and mental health
• To share good practices on how to support the well-being of young people,
• To share youth work practices on dealing with mental health issues,

Young people's health and well-being is a permanent priority in Erasmus+ Youth in Action and it is also highlighted in the European Youth Strategy. 

Format

The seminar was originally planned to happen as a residential seminar in Tønsberg, Norway. Due to the lock-down caused by the outbreak of the Coronavirus we had to cancel the physical seminar. Then we realised that our topic is maybe even more relevant now that many people are isolated and have to deal with feelings like anxiety and loneliness. Youth work has to change its format, and so we decided that we would rather change the format of our seminar than cancel it.

We have been working really hard to present you with a high quality online seminar. Our experts are professionals from the fields of health and youth work, our facilitators (9 of them) are experienced non formal educators, we have a strong technical support team and we pay to have software and technical solutions that are answering our needs.

The programme consists of inputs by the experts, interactive workshops, presentations and exploration of different ways of working on the topic. The sessions will be divided between plenary sessions and facilitated work in smaller groups. It is important to us to make sure that we keep the non formal aspects of the seminar. You will be expected to take part in the whole seminar, and contribute with your opinions and experience. 

Sessions are distributed over 3 days, and the days will last approximately 5 hours, breaks included. 

All selected participants will also be invited to a pre-meeting with one of our facilitators. More information about how and when will be given to the selected participants.

Profile of Participants

This seminar is for youth workers and persons in other relevant positions in youth work. It is an opportunity for you who are currently working on, or are interested to work on, the topics of mental health in youth work context.

You should be able to communicate in English.  We also expect you to share what you learn with your colleagues, and to implement the new knowledge and skills in your local work with young people.

Technical equipment needed: Computer with camera and microphone and reliable internet connection. https://zoom.us/ will be the main digital platform of the seminar. You need to download this if you are selected to participate.