AIM

Beautiful Mind International aims are as follows: 1. To educate local youth and society through awareness campaigns; thus, destigmatising the topic, related fears and worries; 2. To provide skills and tools for youth to take care of their mental health. In other words to enable youth to take care of themselves. This will be done by self-exploration and self-support groups. 3. To train youth workers to organize Problem management groups locally.

SHORT DESCRIPTION

Since the mental health challenges amongst youth are relevant both at regional and global levels it is valuable to share good practices from different cultures to address it. BMI aims at enabling youth to take care of their mental wellbeing by providing them with skills to do so. The project uses an innovative Problem Management technique to teach youth cognitive behavioral therapy and problem-solving therapy strategies. Moreover, BMI project aims to create an online info bank where the contacts of psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker or psychiatric nurse could be found in any partner country. This is a tool for youth to find the help they need at any place or time.

PROJECT MAIN ACTIVITIES

Research to identify the exact youth mental health issues and stigmas, the existing best practices and their effectiveness, available tools and methodologies for teaching youth workers about the psychological support for youth.

Communication campaigns will be carried out in order to destigmatize mental health issues. The choice of content and materials will depend on stigmas and prevailing mental health issues in each country.

4 short term training courses:

• Philippines: Actualities and PM+
  Goal: share good practice, adapt PM+ when solving the issues of each country, create a framework for PM+ implementation, learn how to pass the PM+ skillset onto youth and colleagues, and to launch educational communication campaigns.
• Nepal: Face the challenge and teach
  Goal: support the youth workers (who are leading PM+ locally), broaden their PM+ skills on teaching youth to be group leaders. After this training course, youth workers leading PM+ groups should start identifying young leaders within the group and train them to have a group of their own.
• Taiwan: Experience and challenges
  Goal: support youth leaders leading PM+ and teach them how to pass the gained knowledge onto youth and colleagues.
• Vietnam: Addressing mental health challenges
  Goal: extract the best ways and define recommendations on addressing youth mental health difficulties.

Establish 2 different youth help groups for self-exploration and self-support. Groups will include cognitive behavioural therapy, problem-solving therapy strategies and focus on teaching stress management (slow breathing exercises), problem management (selection of problems, brainstorming for solutions, planning implementation of solutions), positive behaviours (re-engaging with pleasant and task-oriented activities), social skills.

Create an online platform, an online info bank with resources & contacts of mental health specialists from each partner country. Additionally, to have info about the project, communication campaign materials, ways of contributing, useful links to learn more about mental health, methodology and learning tools (for youth workers) on how to support youth with mental health challenges.

Organize a final event to raise awareness on mental health by presenting project results. Psychologists, coaches, and other mental health specialists will be invited to speak and discuss related issues. The main aim of this event is to present the results of the project and organize a discussion panel on the issue.

Participating countries: Lithuania, Nepal, Vietnam, The Philippines, Taiwan

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

Keep looking for participants call on these Active Youth platforms:

• Facebook
• Website calendar
• Biweekly newsletter

To learn about the calls first, join Turn On: Club on Patreon.

FOLLOW THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE PROJECT, UPCOMING EVENTS, AND ACTIVITIES HERE:

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