Young people's mental health and well-being
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Dariusz: [00:00:00] Welcome to the next episode of UNDER 30, the podcast of the European Union - Council of Europe Youth Partnership. Yes, we are going to talk about youth mental health and wellbeing. I think the topic that has been discussed for a while now when it comes to youth work.

It was not discussed before a lot, recently after Covid it has been discussed a lot. We'll explore a little bit, why, what are the problems, how youth work can actually approach it and what is being done already in the youth work arena. But before that, we have, people here who we are going to talk to about this problem.

Can you please introduce yourself?

Aagje: Hello everyone. My name is Aagje Rottiers, but you can call me Aggie. I'm from Belgium and I work there at the Ambrassade, which is an organization in Flanders, a part of Belgium. And this organization works, has three tasks by [00:01:00] decree, informing young people, supporting other youth work organizations and supporting the Flemish Youth Council. So there I work as a policy officer on the mental health, and also integrity, and my relationship to the topic of mental health. I studied pedagogical sciences, I think I was always curious on how people feel, what the dynamic is in a group, the context of a person of in growing up and I think this is why I dived a bit deeper in the topic. And I want to work on it for it a better understanding of it, but also to. see what everyone can do for a positive development of children and young people. So is a bit of me.

Paavo: [00:02:00] Hello everyone. My name is Paavo Pyykkönen and I'm from the Finnish National Agency for Erasmus Plus and European Solidarity Corps National Agency. And,what do I have to do with mental health? Well, everybody has a mental health. Even I have a mental health. You all have mental healths. And, in my work, I am coordinating a long-term strategic project that is aiming to promote the mental health of youth workers and young people in Europe. So, our plan is to create repeatable training so that we can train youth workers on what is mental health, how to care of your own mental health, and how to promote the mental health of the young people. That's me.

Dariusz: Thank you, Paavo. Lana is also with us from the partnership. We are basically after the seminar on the youth mental health and wellbeing, that happened in Strasbourg recently. But it's not the only [00:03:00] activity that the partnership is doing.

I mean, the topic of mental health and wellbeing of young people has been on the agenda for quite a while, especially after the Covid pandemic. Can you tell us a little bit where are we with, mental health and wellbeing of young people and also youth workers as Paavo mentioned, when it comes to partnership work?

Lana: Indeed, we know that youth mental health and wellbeing has been an important topic for quite some time, but it was really since, 2020, since the COVID-19 pandemic, that we have received the opportunity or space to explore this topic a bit more and to see what can we do?

Not only as a youth partnership, but as the youth sector, and this includes youth organizations and youth workers and youth policy to support young people. And, since 2020 as a part of our COVID-19 Knowledge Hub, we conducted several studies exploring what [00:04:00] factors influence young people's mental health and wellbeing, and how can youth workers support them in this. We also had a Coyote issue. Coyote is our youth work magazine, which focused on youth wellbeing during the pandemic. And these were just kind of the starting points for us on exploring the topic. we know also in the last two years when we did the consultation with our networks, which are EKIP and PEYR, so European Knowledge Center for Youth Policy and Pool of European Youth Researchers. That they highlighted that in all member states the topic of youth mental health was really receiving on prominence. So we started a research project last year, so in 2024, exploring what is the state of youth mental health and wellbeing across Europe, what policies are in place to support young people's wellbeing. What are the [00:05:00] services available? Who is providing them? And also what competencies do youth workers need to work on this topic? Because we often think of youth workers as kind of superheroes who can address every topic and work on everything but as Paavo mentioned, we also all have some, needs, to support our mental health and wellbeing. So the study is really exploring all of these. It's, quite comprehensive. It's coming up this summer. And the seminar was a chance for us to really showcase some of the findings of the study, and also to bring to Strasbourg many youth organizations, as well as the national agencies, the service providers as well, to speak about what they do on this topic. And as a part of our portfolio on mental health and wellbeing, we are also currently working on the T-kit on Wellbeing which should be available probably from next year. It's currently in development. As you see, quite a [00:06:00] lot of things that we are exploring but I think it's really important to say that the youth organizations are the ones who have expertise on this topic.

So we are really happy during the seminar to have had on board, several organizations that could share how they support young people in this.

Paavo: I was in the seminar in Strasbourg and I thought that it's really nice to see that there are so many youth organizations who are doing a good job, and I think that it's important here to maybe highlight that youth work has its fear is being a preventive a action. So, should never wander off to the side of diagnosing everyone or trying to cure somebody or give therapy to everyone. Even though I know that in many countries, youth workers can be by their professional background, for example psychologists psychiatrists . I don't still think that youth work is the domain where therapy would be given. That's a different place where that kind of [00:07:00] interventions are made and youth work just should remain this kind of preventive, promotional space.

And everyone in youth work can have those skills to, to work on the mental health.

Dariusz: I guess that's where the different competencies of youth workers are coming. I mean, knowing exactly where or in which moment to use external services, when the youth work is just, this is the end, this is the border. We cannot go farther with that, like with therapy or so on. But we talk about the competencies a little bit later, I think.

Thank you for this Paavo. I think that this is also a voice in the discussion. I heard these voices very often. Where are the limits of youth work when it comes to mental health, wellbeing of young people? I mean, historically, for many years, I mean since probably the beginning of youth work was always about creating safe spaces for young people where young people can develop, they can meet, they can talk, they can play, they can do different things that are important for the development on different levels.

Lana, you mentioned that there is the study being [00:08:00] done, but I'm just very curious, maybe not on the basis of the research. I mean, it's the question to all of you, what is the state of mental health of young people in your experience, in your practice? I mean, where are we with this?

What are the main issues or the problems that suddenly we see that it's important to develop youth workers' competencies related to mental health and wellbeing of young people. So what is the state of mental health and wellbeing of young people?

Lana: Maybe I can just start with one statistic that we have from our study and then Aggie and Pavo can share their perspectives, but in terms of the state of youth mental health and wellbeing, we know from the World Health Organization that one in seven adolescents face some kind of mental health needs and troubles. Therefore, statistically, or in terms of numbers, we know that it is also topic, which is gaining importance. It's [00:09:00] something that's on the rise. And, that there are increasing demands on the services providing mental health and wellbeing support. So that's for me on the research side.

But, maybe, Paavo and Aagie can share from the practice.

Aagje: I want to take one step back and to talk on what is wellbeing or mental health or, because, we all have maybe some kind of different definition on it. I think there are many factors, which are influencing mental health or wellbeing, you have the social parts, the physical parts and the mental parts. And even underneath these parts, under mental part, the mental part, you have psychological, cognitive, emotional, spiritual. So you have so many elements of wellness. And this altogether forms on how you feel where there is a [00:10:00] nature part, like what is in your DNA, the genetic part,but also nurture, the housing where you stay, the family where you've been raised, have you been through negative experiences through your upbringing, and all these things can have risk factors, but also qualitative factors like feeling connectedness, having social supports is really a qualitative factor for feeling well. And this is where then youth work comes up because that's a strength of youth work. But I wanted to maybe stress all these things of mental health, wellbeing, and everything. And I think there are some main findings to state that the mental health of young people, it's kind of in a crisis, or it's not going well, you can see that, a more individualized society is not contributing to the mental health of young [00:11:00] people. But also the fact that we have broadened the diagnosis is also, yeah, creating more space to talk on it, to diagnose more, which means that the numbers will will get high. But even everything with media and digitalization is like the buffering part, but also creating more stress on young people and so on

Paavo: Yeah,I think that the definition of mental health by the World Health Organization is something like that. You basically you feel that you're capable of function in the society and you can make decisions, and you can make relationships. You can deal with stress, you can, you know, contribute and so on.

And, I would imagine that, maybe there's something wrong with the world because we see [00:12:00] so many symptoms of young people not feeling well. I mean, the European youth strategy was made already before the COVID, and already then the young people picked up mental health as one of the, one of the key issues that, that decision makers or basically everybody should pay attention on. I remember around the same time we organizedNordic seminar on mental health. And I realized there young youth workers met a lots of young people that had problems of this and that and were kind of like symptoms that they didn't not quite know what to do with. And the fact that we could talk with them about what is mental health and how can you promote it, and where does your role end made them feel more confident and more secure in, in their work. After all, like, just like, it was said before that youth work, if it's a good [00:13:00] value based youth work practice, it is already something that will create an environment where young people are recognized and builds a nicekinda solid base for growing up as a functional member of the society.

But then on top of that, youth workers should be knowledgeable what can they do? How can they intervene if something happens? And, I don't know Darek, you said that where are the lines or where are the boundaries? It's the old example if you are running a normal youth activity and somebody breaks a leg.

So every youth worker knows. where the line goes, what they are supposed to do and what they're not supposed to do. And we just have to train youth workers to understand where is the line that you should not step over? As you said that there are certainly very different kind of competencies that you need for promoting youth [00:14:00] work and diagnosing or, I don't know, going to the intervention site.

Dariusz: Thank you, it would be actually interesting to listen maybe a little bit what you are actually doing. I mean, Paavo mentioned, and Aagie also mentioned a little bit what your organization, institution is for. But if you can give some practical examples of what your organization, institution is actually doing in order to address the issue of mental health and wellbeing of young people.

Aagje: With the Ambrassade we try to influence policy on national level where we give formal advice from the youth council, but we also try to influence the policy also on an in informal way to talk with politicians, to work together with the press, and to bring forward the voice of young [00:15:00] people in this topic. But we also work behind the scenes together with administration, for example who are coordinating the mental health services to work to implement all the decrees for a better implementation. In this the Ambrassade also supports youth work organizations to collect actually all the voices because via youth work it's a really good way to listen to children and young people and to collect those voices and bring them and influence policy.

So we need to stick together, listen to each other, and try to collect those voices to do something about it. But we also try to look on how we can improve our youth work in those different kind of challenges or how we can maybe make better agreements with other [00:16:00] sectors such as schools, such as mental health services.

And what is the role of a youth worker? So this is where the Ambrassade is a hub where so many youth workers come and go. We have workshops, we have a lot of meetings. And of course then the thirdtask of the Ambrassade where we work together with so many organizations to, we coordinate actually youth information, qualitative youth information to train them on what are qualitative areas on good information for children and young people, how you target them, in what way you give neutral, but still non directive, but good information on child, child proof way. We are trying our best and looking on how to, how to do it because next to mental health we have also other challenges. So it's always difficult to dive deep in the topic because we also [00:17:00] go to seminars or try to study the latest studies, to work with young people to inform them and then have their voice. So yeah, there are some examples on how we work.

Paavo: Well, when you are working in the National Agency for the European programs of course, we hardly ever see young people ourselves. We have to work with organizations. The only tool that we have is our training budget. So every country has a training budget and the idea of starting this kind of long-term strategic approaches was to maybe work on a topic that has not been worked on before. So I think that when we, as the Finnish National Agency, proposed that there should be a long-term process on mental health, it was very well received and 17 countries wanted to work on us with the topic. There are certain things that we try to do as the big project, and this is, for example, this [00:18:00] training modules.

We have one ready and it's for the mentors of European Solidarity Corps volunteers. There has been already years we have known that many of the volunteers tend to have different issues and they may be are highlighted during that project abroad. So we are trying to train the mentors, how they can support the volunteers in that kind situation. We also have a communication strategy where we, our idea is to raise awareness about mental health and maybe, you know, also give this kind of non-biased, understandable fact-based, information. The next project we have is on the European Mental Health Week in May when we are promoting the voices of young people. We had a survey on asking young people to explain what it feels like when you are [00:19:00] recognized, and then the whole campaign is based on this. So we want to encourage youth workers to hear and see and recognize the young people as they are in their services and this way try to build a base for a good self-esteem and good mental health.

Dariusz: Thank you. I just want to come back a little bit to what Paavo said at the beginning, but also what I experienced also in my practice is that the youth workers are very often coming and then asking. Exactly what should I do? How should I react? Do I need to call a psychologist?

Do I need to do that? Or, you know, all these questions. So I want to come back a little bit to the skills, to competencies of youth workers. Paavo, you have the experience already with the module, as you said, training modules. So it would be interesting to actually know what are these competencies that youth worker need to deal with the topic of mental health and wellbeing of young people.

Aagje: I think maybe [00:20:00] I want to dive into that. With Ambrassade, we work together with other youth work organizations in Flanders to a framework for organizations where organizations can think of how do we work on promotion, creating a safe climate, how do we work on prevention, where you can even split it into three, universal prevention, selective prevention, or even individual prevention. Then the third part is actually curation. Which is clear that it's not the task of youth work organizations, then between prevention and curation or treatment, There is like of a blurry part, which is called the bridge figure, where we wanted to state [00:21:00] that not every youth worker should be an expert. We want to counterpart , where we first want to explicit. Yes, it's task for creating a safe environment. Um, and when the group is more differentiated, you need to have even a little bit more sensitive skills. But then when it comes on a part of being a bridge figure as a youth worker, somehow maybe forming a bridge to finding a good youth mental health service, to like have a sensitive talk and know what is your role and what is not your role.

Not everyone should have all these skills, but maybe as an organization you can think of who can have skills and who doesn't need these skills. And then the next part comes, okay, who needs to train these bridge figures? What skills can they have and should they [00:22:00] shouldn't have? And there, there is, like in Harvard a meta-analysis has been done on what should be the competencies of these bridge figures. There is a country Estonia, who has been experimenting in this, where they trained those bridge figures not only in youth work, but also in schooling. I think this is kind of interesting, but I think the hardest part is to give this framework, like you are already working on a good mental health of young people. When we play, when you are creating, when children are like, discovering their own talents when they talk to each other and like doing their thing in youth work that is already promoting mental health. I think this kind of story, we need to tell this to everyone who is [00:23:00] in contact with young people and then maybe differentiates in what we can expect of who in this topic. I think this is the way to go, but I also know that Paavo has been on the strategic discovery in all those countries.

So maybe you can also elaborate some more, or even like counter argument me, because I think that's also interesting discussion.

Paavo: I don't really want to counterargument you ar at all. I think that, I believe that youth work is a preventive practice and, like I said, that many youth workers, they feel relieved and they feel confident when they understand that if, that they are already doing the good job, it means they've, on competence wise, I don't know, be able to listen and really listen not to ,be judgemental, to be supportive, to ask [00:24:00] what the young people needed to support them on what they're planning on and so on. This is kind of basic youth work practice, I think. But then of course there are mental health related skills. And, why I know this is because we work with the Finnish National Mental Health Association and we basically rely quite a lot on what they have.

And, they have been training thousands and thousands of teachers and youth workers in Finland about these mental health skills and basically. these are the things that we also take into our training module. So it starts with the basic idea of how do you sleep, drink, eat, have social connections, to do exercise, I don't know, have creative free time activities.

This is the basis, like if you don't sleep well, if you don't eat well, you infinitely feel worse. And if young [00:25:00] people learn what kind of effect all these things have on their life then maybe they can make wiser decisions. It can be also about things like your coping skills that when you feel distressed. What is the thing that makes you grounded? Like do you need to go running or do you listen to music or do you have to write in your diary or, I don't, do you go gardening? I go gardening when I need that. That you understand who are your safety network people like, like who do you talk to when you're in distress?

Is it your mother? Is it your dog? Is it your friend? Is it your youth worker? Or the mere fact that can you recognize your feelings? Like, can you recognize what feeling I am feeling now? And to understand the feelings have a start and an end, and they're not like continuous. And how can we talk about our feelings and how do we maybe regulate our feelings that what does make [00:26:00] you calm down if we are angry or helps us to get motivated if we are being, I don't know, tired something like that. This kind of skills. And I think it means that you have to be exposed to this kind of theories and practices and then it's your job to realize what are the things that work for you. And I think youth work can be a very valuable tool in this kind of thing if we can talk with the young people about mental health skills and they learn what works for them and what regulates them.

Aagje: I think people who come in contact with children and young people, we all need to learn more to listen and see and to think from like children's rights kind of way, because then we maybe also something with these signals [00:27:00] and to tackle the root causes because we don't talk often about it, and it's always a wicked problem. So it's easier to work on how can they cope and how can they learn to cope and everything. But I don't think we should give up to look at it on a children's right way and then do something with these signals and still advocate for them.

Because what if we are on a summer camp and all those children begin to break their leg on that tree? Then we don't go to that tree or we ask the local authorities to maybe do something with the park because it's not safe anymore and we should do something about it. And I think we need to do the same with all these symptoms who come across not only learn on how to cope with our symptoms, but to take away those root causes.

And I think, youth workers, teachers, [00:28:00] people in service aids should be really critical and look, we can work with the whole system or we should address that, the schooling. they should have more finances so the school can work on its proper task instead.

Yeah. I don't know, I miss sometimes the critical lens, looking from children's rights.way. And I think if we are with more, then maybe we can create some changes, because we really need mental health, like or wellbeing and all policies. We really need that. And I think everyone who comes in contact with children can collect these voices and then we need to address the right persons and do something on it. But it's also, it's draining because it's slow or sometimes it's also [00:29:00] not your role because you're in contact with young people.

You are not able maybe to bring this voice to the right person. But I think we, yeah, we can't give up.

Paavo: I think it's nice because you can work on the national level and you can actually look how the services work and all of that. What we try to do is to make the organizations to kind of critically think that are we an organization that supports the mental health of the young people who come there, because many times if you have bad practices, it can have an effect on the people who are frequent your services. We as a national agency have no business in dealing with po policies of different countries. So I'm happy that, that there are organizations like that. At the same time I say that many of the distress in this world like war in Ukraine or in Palestine or you know, whatever you see on your TikTok and, you know, [00:30:00] this kind of thing.

Climate, change. They are ongoing things where you cannot do much about it. The only thing you can do is as to stay as a functional member of the society. You can try and regulate your own thinking and then work within your sphere to, to help or to, I don't know, try to make a change.

Many young people say, I think it was said in the study of the partnership, and it was shown in the seminar that. And I'm terrible with numbers, so I don't even try to say a number, but it was a surprisingly big number of young people saying that they are so concerned about the climate that it, it changes how they function in the society. And I mean, it's silly if the society doesn't react to this, I mean, people are always talking about how expensive. this, and that is. [00:31:00] I'm sure it's very expensive if the, if like, you know, half of the young people cannot function in this society because they worried about what happens to the planet.

Dariusz: Thanks a lot. I think the topic is really, big and we could continue. I mean, there's also another aspect of it. I mean, we talk a lot about mental health and wellbeing of young people, and I think we probably should talk and connect it to mental health and wellbeing of youth workers as well, which is also important to go, but we don't have time for this. Maybe it's the topic for another podcast. and another study. I dunno. Lana, anything else to add?

Lana: I think, just to also reflect that when we speak about young people's mental health and wellbeing, you know, it's not only the services and the responses, but also Aggie has mentioned, these different factors and Paavo mentioned climate change. And, our study really shows that some of the main causes of declining youth mental health are [00:32:00] related to the state of economy, the cost of living, the housing, the precarity of, the jobs. Of course then there is the eco anxiety and the questions related to the climate change, the global security. Sometimes, even there are, indications about the use of social media and digitalization.

Although our study does show that this is still, the jury is still out on this. But, I think really thinking holistically about young people's mental health and considering all these different issues that affect, the wellbeing of not only young people, but all of us of course, I think one important point maybe to close on is that it is the civil society organizations and youth organizations that actually provide most services, and that are there. But, and the numbers, at least in our study show that non-governmental organizations are the key service providers and they are the first [00:33:00] responders basically. And it is also crucial then to consider how can these people that work with young people then, uh, take care of themselves. So I don't know if there will be another study on that, Darek, but I think it's certainly something for all of us to keep in mind and think about, you know, the self-awareness and how do we respond to crisis. but then also how do we take care of ourselves in this process.

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