The “normal – mental well-being” project was born from our passion to help young people improve their mental well-being. As a group of young people from rural Ireland, who have all had our own troubles with mental health, we felt it our duty to do something to make a difference.
Not only do we believe that mental well-being is a future challenge that requires intervention, we truly believe that it is a crippling epidemic that requires immediate response, particularly in young people as we have seen our peers, friends and family bottle their inner demons and struggle with their mental well-being, all the while feeling they’re the odd ones out. This is far from the truth, in reality every single person is fighting a battle that the whole world knows nothing about, meaning everyone’s mental struggles are in fact “normal” and being different isn’t a bad thing, it’s “normal”, however young people are blinded to see it that way, which we feel we can change.
Too many young people struggle on a daily basis with their mental health. From minor overthinking, to crippling anxiety, our mental health really can bring us to our knees. Stigma, poor health services, and misinformation can lead certain young people to believe that they are “damaged”, “beyond repair”, “odd”, the list goes on. As a result, many young people bottle up their problems, hiding their struggles, leading to worsening conditions, poor quality of life and even suicide.
We are proudly co-funded by the European Commission under the European Solidarity Corps, and will use this great opportunity to allow us to continue to reach further youth groups all over Ireland. This project sees us build on our previous efforts and will help us expand operations. More importantly, this project will help us garner significant and important data on the mental well-being on young people across Ireland through anonymous surveys, prior, just after and a few weeks post our visit to assess wellbeing.
This project will also see us link in with local mental health services to ensure that the young people we speak to have adequate access to professional services to improve their mental wellbeing
The project will begin in September 2024 and conclude in August 2025 when we hope we will have spoken to thousands of young people and left a positive impact on some of their lives. We live by the motto of making a significant difference to 1 in 100 and believe this project will therefore enables us to make hundreds of significant impacts.
A full scope of the project and what it entails can be found here:
Normal - Mental Wellbeing 