This project will be carried out at a national, regional or local level and the primary aim to promote the mental health of young people between the age of 14 and 25 years of age. The project shall focus on this age group because this is a transition period from adolescent to early adulthood which is the age period where many young people feel most pressured and end up having their mental health affected. However this will not exclude the older or younger groups of people who fall below or above the stated age range. The goal of mental health promotion is to help the target group reach a health mental equilibrium and maintain this stability. This project focuses both on the general healthy population of adolescents and those who might be “at risk”. Our overall objective is to help well-adjusted adolescents and young people function in society in a mentally healthy way as well as to provide them with strategies on how to cope with life crises. Our definition of mental health promotion points out that mental health promotion is a large concept and encompasses more than just the prevention of mental illness. It is clear that the absence of psychopathology in a young person does not necessarily imply that he or she has a positive mental health status. It is therefore essential to not only have mental health promotion for adolescents and young people at risk but also for the general population of this age range. The methods will involve:
Promotion: this will aims at promoting positive mental health by creating conditions that will favor an optimal psycho-sociological and psycho-physiological development
primary intervention: to promote positive mental health and reduce the incidence of problems in the first place or, if the risks are there, to help adolescents and young people as well as their parents build up resilience
Secondary intervention aims at creating awareness on the need for constant check up and counseling for the early detection and the treatment of problems in their early stages in order to reduce their prevalence.
Primary and secondary prevention will help the general population of adolescents and young people to take control over their lives and teach them coping skills for life crises; to detect young people who are at risk of developing a mental illness due to socio-economic circumstances in their lives. As a consequence, primary and secondary prevention programs may themselves reduce the long-term costs of the treatment and rehabilitation of a person with a chronic mental illness.
Objectives
The objectives of the project will be the following:
To raise public awareness for mental health promotion and prevention for adolescents and young people;
To initiate and support activities in mental health promotion addressing issues of specific concern in adolescents and young people;
To identify, clarify and classify examples of good initiatives in the country.
To organize the exchange of information and experience in mental health amongst participants.
To build a network of national partners and experts.