Mounthawk Youth Mental Health Committee

By

Transition Year Students

As a Transition Year project, Mercy Mounthawk students Ruth Baker, David Lee and Michelle Williams have launched a positive mental health and depression awareness campaign within their school. The campaign, called “Don’t Hide it, Fight It” has been ongoing since September and is experiencing huge success thanks to the hard work put in by Ruth and the TY Mental Health committee. It has already made a huge impact on the school, with competitions, quizzes, guest speakers from mental health organisations ‘Aware’, a youth forum for 2^nd year students, a

fundraising talent show ‘Mounthawk’s Got Talent’, and a mime created and performed by the committee at the Transition Year End of Year show in Siamsa Tire.

The Forum was held in the school gym to officially launch the project and to teach Junior Cycle students about depression in adolescents and the frighteningly high statistics that surround it.

The Youth Forum was held Friday 7th of March and was funded for by our corporate sponsor, Quinn Healthcare. To avoid the formation of cliques, they picked out 2nd year students at random and put them each into different groups: with each group having a different coloured sticker. The students did not know what to expect from the day and when they entered the brightly coloured gym with balloons and posters everywhere they were definitely surprised. The forum consisted of 6 different activities with two members of the TY Mental Health committee in charge of each activity. The 6 groups of ten students spent 20 minutes at each of the mental health associated activities, which included listening to songs that a person suffering from depression could relate to, looking at pictures of people in different situations and talking about how they might be feeling and teaching the students about the symptoms and statistics surrounding depression in teenagers.

The Forum was a huge success: the students enjoyed the day and learned a lot from it. The Mental Health Committee were very pleased with the outcome and hope that it helped to abolish some of the stigma surrounding depression in young people and hopefully made students realise that there is always someone there to talk to.

Mental Health is an entirely new committee which meets once a week and is organised solely by the TY students, with the help of teachers Mr. Sean Coffey and Mrs. Mairead O’ Mahony. With the campaign, the students aim to raise awareness of Mental Health with young people.

The campaign has been a huge success so far and the group have many ideas for the future. In early November, Ruth contacted Dr. Tony Bates, psychologist and columnist for the Irish Times and head of the national youth mental health centre, Headstrong. Dr. Bates was very interested and amazed at the work the committee had done and what they planned to do. His ideas and support have played a huge part in the development of this project.

“Headstrong have a lot of Youth Advisors,” said Ruth, “and we’re really looking forward to working with them on the project.”

The committee have already accomplished a huge amount as well as the Youth Forum, including painting a banner for the GP area and holding a slogan competition for first and second years (the winning slogan was “Mind Yourself, and was submitted by 2nd year Kevin Dowling). The long-term aim of the student committee is to produce an educational DVD and resource pack on Youth Mental Health for schools around Kerry. Everyone has put in a lot of work and production of the DVD and resource pack will hopefully begin early next year.

The project is being proudly supported by Quinn-Healthcare and without their support both financially and professionally the project would not be where it is today.

On average, one in four people will suffer from depression at some point in their lives. The campaign was set up to tackle those statistics, to raise awareness and to let students know that it is OK to feel crap. With their initiave and dedication to the project, we can be sure that the Mounthawk TY Mental Health committee will continue to do great work in the area of Youth Mental Health.