Youth Advocacy for Mental Health: Create Leaders to Innovate and Break Stigma!

One out of four people will develop a mental health problem at some point of life, according to the World Health Organisation. Mental ill health accounts for 20% of the burden of disease within the European Union. These figures represent an enormous toll of human ill health, with an estimated 83 million people being affected within the European Region and over 60 million people in India.

Majority of mental health illnesses develop early at adulthood between the ages of 16 and 25, therefore making it a significant problem among the youth. It is the lack of structure and qualitative mass dissemination of existing information and resources from the mental health sector to the society at large which is a hindrance, that this project aims to tackle.

Problems the project aims to address:
1. Lack of strong leadership within the health sector, that leads to poor advocacy of mental health within the comprehensive health and well-being sectors;
2. Lack of quality information available to masses leading to late interventions, poor treatments, self medicating and emerging false self diagnosis that pose further risk to health conditions;
3. Societal stigma and several cultural barriers associated to mental health issues leading to people deny mental health care for better living.

Innovations/Interventions to be developed during the project:
1. Capacity Building Programmes for Strong Leadership - the project commits to create a curriculum using non-formal learning methodologies to build capacities of youth suffering from mental illnesses, focusing on addressing urban and rural youth, newly arrived migrants/refugees.

2. Online Portal to Bridge Information Gap - The project commits to create a comprehensive content on mental health and empowering experiences on a single platform online focusing on distributing qualitative information on mental health which is easily available and accessible to all.

3. Gaming to Raise Awareness - The projects commits on creating an innovative board game using the gathered latest information based on local EU and India contexts along with unifying existing games for easy access on raising awareness of injustices within the mental health sector, to break stigma and begin the much needed dialogue of mental health.