SpunOut.ie Blog

Submit an article, image, video or audio Join our mailing list

SpunOutters help shape mental health campaign

Blog: Andrew reports back on how young people are shaking up mental health in Ireland.

Article by : SpunOut.ie

One freezing Thursday morning, in Dublin’s City Centre, SpunOutters Andrew, Claire, Aidan and Eilish, made their journey to the Department of Health and Children.

 


We were attending, on behalf of SpunOut.ie, a workshop run by the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, and the National Office of Suicide Prevention in Ireland.

The workshop was a day for young people from different youth organisations to come together to generate ideas for a new Mental Health Awareness Campaign, aimed at young people.  
 
The fantastic Claire and Aidan, volunteers from SpunOut.ie (Woo!) gave a presentation about the ins-and-outs of the website and Spunout.ie’s work in mental health. Everyone agreed that it was quite brilliant!

Just before the lunch break (which everybody salivated over as it arrived in the door) we were shown four different adverts.

Ads:  

  1. HSE ad entitled ‘Your Mental Health, Learn to Look After It.’ Most people will know this ad, which has been played on TV, featuring different people speaking about how powerful your mental health is.
  2. Northern Ireland Health Service ad featuring a young man who removes a mask from his face. It showed that the young man was removing the mask he wore in front of his friends, but that he was still the same underneath.
  3. The Samaritans ad showed a man caught in a trap in the jungle, who was being offered help, but still refused.
  4. The Tough Times ad (SpunOut.ie was a partner in the ad)  was of a café setting, with people thinking about the different problems they were facing. It featured relevant issues young people face, but linked to their mental health.

After lunch, everyone was split up into three different groups. Sadly Claire was ripped away from us but we still carried on! Each group discussed the four different ads and examined the points they thought would suit an ad for young people. Also, we amalgamated the different positive features, and came up with an ad which we thought was suitable.

We’re not going to give away our ideas, but we’ll let you all know if we Spunoutters get our ideas included in the ad! Believe me, we will!
 
Each group then presented their work to the masses and we rounded the day up, on a very positive note; that all our ideas were going to be incorporated into their campaign which they hope to launch next year. We were also told that we are going to be invited back in the New Year to discuss some new ads they hope to have developed from our hard day’s brainstorming!
 
Everyone then all huddled together for a lovely photo and off we went, having a great feeling of accomplishment!
 
All the Spunouters- Claire, Eilish, Aidan and I, can agree that we definitely enjoyed the day. We’re all looking forward to the next meeting in the New Year.
 
I think Claire summarised the day quite nicely, “It was fun!”
 
Wouldn’t you agree?
 
By: Andrew Smith

Wanna get involved in similar SpunOut.ie opportunities? Email emily@spunout.ie today!