We wanted to achieve the following objectives: - Enhance the mental health literacy of youth workers - Equip youth workers to identify youth mental health distress, provide first-hand support, and refer them to specialised services if needed - Foster cooperation among mental health experts, youth and youth workers - Share good practices to learn from experiences in different countries - Fight against the mental health stigma - Foster a peer-to-peer approach to mental health - Guide the adoption of measures at different levels to support youth mental health
A prolonged negative impact on youth mental health had been noticed since the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, paired with precarity, uncertainty, and vulnerability, had significantly increased youth mental health issues. Although more young people had reported mental health struggles, frontline workers often lacked the skills and knowledge to identify issues and provide first-hand support. The war in Ukraine posed new challenges that were expected to impact young people's mental health, for which youth services were not yet prepared. YiMinds had developed resources to equip youth information workers with the knowledge and tools to identify youth at risk and redirect them to mental health experts when necessary. Youth with mental health conditions often suffered stigma and discrimination in their communities, that’s we also developed resources for them as well. Young people were not only seen as a target; they had been actively involved throughout the project. Encouraging mental health among young people by young people was key and lay at the core of YiMinds.