Last month, a number of staff and members of Headstrong’s Youth Advisory Panel, visited Arás an Uachtatain as guests of the President to attend an address by Dr Varia Vike-Freiberg, the ex-president of Lativa and newly appointed vice-chairperson of The European Union Reflection group. They were joined by 90 other young people from all aspects of youth culture and life throughout the island of Ireland.

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When I think about ‘youth mental health’, I think of the thousands of teenagers who are somehow managing to live their lives while secretly disintegrating, wishing for oblivion....

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Gangly spotty teenager finds self confidence.

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“You are aware that at present this is a crowd of individuals. They all have their self-interest to the fore. The work goes on. The atmosphere changes by degrees and then, all of a sudden in a rush, the crowd coheres; it is now a community of interest. The group seems to become palpable; to be vibrant. The life of the group.” Chris Underhill

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Headstrong partnered with American and Australian collaborators to host a symposium at the recent World Conference On Health Promotion and Health Education in Vancouver

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Sometimes, there is nothing like getting a glimpse into the lives of others and other countries to help us to re-evaluate the way we think about life and the problems it throws at us. Not only this, but it can open up all sorts of avenues to help improve our thinking about mental health and how to cater for young people’s needs. Headstrong were joined for a few days by Chris Underhill and Lance Montia from “Basic Needs, Basic Rights” an organisation bringing new initiatives in mental health and development.

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Every one deserves a voice when it comes to their mental health. Last night – 25th April – a public meeting on youth mental health, with a focus on human rights was held in UCD. Headstrong was pleased to support our partners in Amnesty and the UCD Equality Society in holding this event. Louize Carrol here gives a personal account of the event.

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Involving young people in the design and delivery of youth mental health services has benefits for both those who receive and provide those services.

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To provide quality services for young people that they will want to use, service planners need to go beyond their own experiences and understand the unique nature of contemporary youth culture.

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When faced with why young people don't use services you can tackle the problem by trying to change young people or trying to change services.

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In Late February, Tony visited the Basic Needs (BN) mental health initiative in Ghana.

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Tony Bates (Headstrong CEO) and Faye Scanlan (Research Officer) visited centers of excellence in Youth Mental Health in Australia, an acknowledged world leader in this field of mental health. Read more about our visits to Inspire/ReachOut!, the Centre for Adolescent Health, ORYGEN and Headspace.

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Headstrong attended the Young People Now's conference on Joined Up Mental Health Service Provision in Birmingham in February. In this post, Matt highlights of some of the key learnings from the event.

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Louize Carroll, Research Assistant at Headstrong, introduces some of our research work and invites you to help us design our research programme.

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Bob Illback joined Headstrong from the US on 1st January 2007 as Director of Service Evaluation. In his first post to headstrong.ie, Bob outlines some of the most striking features that he has encountered in his first month in Ireland and the resulting questions he is pondering.

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