Care for Mental Youth’s Health.

N.º 2021-2-PL01-KA220-YOU-000050154

CARE YOU

Promoting Mental Health and Wellbeing for Young People in Europe

Impact of Mental Health in Europe

Across the European Union, over 84 million people suffered from mental health issues, affecting more than a third of the population in many countries. These issues had wide-ranging devastating effects on individuals’ lives, even leading to suicide, with one occurring every 40 seconds globally. Young people, women, and disadvantaged groups were the most at risk.

Common Mental Health Issues

The most commonly diagnosed mental health disorders included depression, stress, anxiety, and eating disorders, with symptoms such as sadness, isolation, anger, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts.

Impact of COVID-19

The “Health at a Glance Europe 2020” report noted that the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis exacerbated the burden of mental ill-health, as habits significantly worsened due to social distancing, confinement conditions, and lack of physical activity.

Inadequate Treatment

The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that 3 out of 4 people suffering from major depression did not receive adequate treatment. The total costs of mental illness treatments were estimated at over €600 billion in the EU. Despite these challenges, mental health awareness increased around the world, especially in Europe.

Our Project

Our partnership aimed to help prevent this burden and build a solid emotional foundation for young people through the following objectives:

Improved Learning Quality and Wellbeing

We sought to improve young people’s learning quality, inclusion, and wellbeing by incorporating Emotional Management (EM) tools into the training process. High-quality EM training courses tailored to young people’s needs provided significant benefits, particularly for disadvantaged groups facing learning, integration, or employment challenges.

Enhanced Knowledge for Involved Entities

We facilitated two participatory visits to transfer practical knowledge on adapting EM tools for specific disadvantaged groups. This enriched knowledge was then shared on the Online Platform.

Provision of Non-Formal Education Tools

The Online Platform compiled knowledge gathered during three Learning, Teaching, and Training Activities (LTTAs). It included practical exercises, contextualising the links between cultural beliefs and emotional problems, human behaviour, emotions, and hormones, and provided key EM tools to improve daily life, work, and learning, especially for disadvantaged groups.

Raising Awareness and Quality Non-Formal Education

We conducted internal workshops on EM for young people, youth workers, entities, and decision-makers in the Non-Formal Education (NFE) sector and other interested parties to raise awareness of the importance of EM and contribute to high-quality non-formal youth education.

Dissemination of EM Approaches and Techniques

We launched a strong dissemination campaign targeting relevant youth and NFE stakeholders to share the results of the project and the Online Platform.

Alignment with EU Objectives

This project addressed the EU strategy for Education and Training’s objectives: making lifelong learning and mobility a reality, improving the quality and efficiency of education and training, and promoting equity, social cohesion, and active citizenship.

Addressing EU Youth Goals 2019-27

The project focused on:

Mental Health & Wellbeing: Directly providing tools, resources, and strategies for youth’s EM.
Quality Learning: Offering innovative EM knowledge and resources to improve youth’s interpersonal, academic, and professional lives, as mental health affects all everyday interactions.
Inclusive Societies: Training on how to work with specific disadvantaged young groups and directly including participants with fewer opportunities.
Equality of All Genders: Highlighting oppressions suffered by youth, including gender-based issues, their emotional consequences, and how to address them.

This project was aligned with the core actions from the EU Youth Strategy to “engage, connect, and empower” EU youth and the EU Framework for Action on Mental Health and Wellbeing goals.

KEY NEEDS

Addressing Identified Needs for Youth Mental and Emotional Health

Through our focus group research, we identified several key needs that our project aims to address:

Partnership

There was a need to acquire innovative skills and resources and to have better-trained staff to care for and improve the mental and emotional health of youngsters in the region.
There was a need to enhance awareness-raising tools and methods to foster mental and emotional health care.

LAJA

There was a need to learn basic tools to support youth’s emotional management.

Pasos

There was a need to understand the emotional needs and peculiarities of groups of youngsters experiencing various social oppressions.

FoK

There was a need to learn basic tools and information on supporting youth’s emotional management.

Youth Workers

There was a need to increase resources to support youngsters in achieving better mental health.
There was a need to improve mechanisms for better social inclusion of youth, particularly disadvantaged groups.

Youth Workers and Young People

There was a need to distinguish between different kinds of emotions and have practical resources to manage them effectively.
There was a need to learn tools to handle emotions in everyday life situations, such as at home, in educational settings, at work, and with friends.