Back to search

Re-Connect: Head in the Cloud - Závislost, osamělost a duševní zdraví mládeže v digitální éře

2026-1-CZ01-KA152-YOU-0003916962026Mobility of young peopleongoing
Countries: CZ|RS|PL|LT|RO|IT · Grant: €29,070
Physical and mental health, well-beingInclusion of marginalised young peopleDigital content, technologies and practices

Objectives

Our youth exchange is called "Re-Connect: Addiction, Loneliness, and Youth Mental Health in the Digital Era", and as the name suggests, we aim to highlight the growing problems in terms of mental health problems of young people, including escape mechanisms in the form of addictions. During the initial survey and based on previous cooperation with experts, such as the Mental Health Center in Cieszyn, we identify the role of new digital technologies and the paradoxical phenomenon of digital isolation associated with them as an increasingly prominent factor. After establishing communication with other entities that later became our partners, we carried out a joint multi-layered analysis of the needs of local youth in 6 countries on this basis The result is our joint initiative, which would provide youth with the opportunity to talk about stigmatized topics of mental health and addiction from the perspective of 6 different countries in a safe, tolerant, comfortable and informed environment, which we want to achieve through specific methods of narrative educational gamified simulation activities and conscious creation of educational content by youth for other youth. These activities will be carried out in the community of the municipality of Písečná and through them participants will have the chance to develop new attitudes towards mental hygiene, as well as their communication, social, creative, but also analytical competencies, gain a new insight into the seriousness of social isolation and the associated influence of new technologies, while from a practical point of view these activities are focused on the identification and prevention of risky addictive behavior. Using gamification methods, we try to explain these concepts in an undemanding, but highly educational form Participants will first have the chance to familiarize others with regional specifics of mental health, such as the hikikomori phenomenon in Italy, the impacts of trauma in Serbia, or the high suicide rate in Lithuania, after which, thanks to interactive workshops such as "Let's not trivialize mental problems", where we will deconstruct myths about mental problems, we will familiarize participants with their typology and real nature. Furthermore, through activities such as "Boyartetherapy", we will connect activities with effective methods of art therapy and music therapy, which are also used by experts with whom we have established contact and who will help us with their implementation. In the activity "Battle for Dopamine" based on A. Boal's concept of the theatre of the oppressed, as well as during the live library with young people with limited opportunities in the area of our project's topic and third parties from the mentioned experts and individuals, we will provide both professional perspectives on our topic and, based on peer-to-peer sharing, real examples of addiction and mental health problems associated with digital isolation, thereby helping participants to internalize this issue. With this inclusive, undemanding and non-conflict nature of our activities, we aim to achieve a deeper inclusion of young people with limited opportunities, which is why they are based on inclusive elements of mutual trust and the search for dialogue, important for consolidating new coping strategies more specifically in practice We will implement this knowledge into the scripts of 6 participant films and introduce them to the local and wider public through cooperation with media such as TV Polar and experts from the Mental Health Center in Cieszyn with the aim of spreading awareness and destigmatizing the search for professional help. Furthermore, by implementing a personal motivation plan, we will guide participants to adopt the psychohygiene techniques that we have implemented in the program, and motivate them to maintain and apply these newly acquired habits in their home environments as a prevention against unhealthy escape mechanisms. They will also be involved in a follow-up digital campaign by distributing and editing the materials obtained, while this follow-up phase also includes elements of gamification, associated with monitoring and regular reporting, includes the publication of articles, cooperation with local media and the organization of multiplication events according to the specific division of tasks of our and partner entities. By implementing our project, we will also provide an opportunity for higher local visibility of the involved partners, both in terms of presence on social networks, which for many of them represents a reported need, and in terms of creating an impulse for the performance of post-project activities for the local community and innovation of procedures in the field of work with youth at risk of social exclusion. We want to achieve this by compiling a methodological file containing the results of our gamified activities with comparative analysis, but also their description and implementation procedure, so that

Project partners (6)