Supporting mental health of young people in the era of coronavirus

We applied for this project to help young people across Europe (especially 13-18-year-old) to deal with post COVID-19 pandemic psychological and pedagogical problems. In 2021, teachers, parents, schools, psychologists and local administrations faced a rapid and unexpected increase in mental health issues among adolescent students. A lot of schools were lacking of specialized staff and, if they were employed, they felt overwhelmed by the scope of psychological and pedagogical problems caused by the pandemic, its challenges and remote education. The same concerns were raised by parents and all specialists in charge of mental health. Moreover, the sanitary crisis has clearly shown a huge importance of digital tools in school education and its role in supporting young people psychologically and pedagogically. Distant learning was a big challenge for teachers, parents and various educators. All those challenges and needs did not disappear with the last lockdown. They were still present and reinforced by new crisis situations that took place after the COVID-19. All the stakeholders mentioned above and the partners involved in the project were obliged to face them and look for new solutions.

The objective of the ME-Health project's implementation was to allow to exchange experience, best practices, knowledge and know-how regarding the psychological and pedagogical problems that appeared among young people due to the COVID-19 crisis and its implications on education. We wanted to share experience and best practices within a partnership including representatives of 4 countries regarding ways of dealing with teenagers' psychological and pedagogical issues during the pandemic and distant education as well. During the project, we were joined by an associated partner representing a VET school from the Netherlands, which allowed us to have a wider perspective on the treated topics. Moreover, we aimed at working on more efficient ways of using ICT in online education and supporting young people psychologically and pedagogically with the ICT. Finally, we wanted to identify tools/instruments/solutions that might be useful in dealing with mental problems of young people in connection to the sanitary crisis in the European Union.

The main core of ME-Health was a series of training events held in four European countries: Austria, Czech Republic, France and Poland. They were 5-day events, including 3 days of training itself. The direct participants of the training events were: officers, teachers, pedagogues, psychologists, headmasters, educators, parents' association’s representatives. The training events covered the following forms of collaboration: workshops, seminars, discussions, study visits. The agenda of each training event was strictly connected with the project's outcome realization and the project's goals. They included: identifying the most common psychological and pedagogical problems, searching solutions and recommendations to fight them, and selecting digital tools and ways of working with them in order to support young people psychologically and pedagogically. The training activities were complemented by transnational meetings involving regional coordinators from the Lubelskie Voivodeship, Styria, Region Grand Est and Moravian-Silesian Region, Rijn IJssel (associated partner) and at two occasions, all other partner organizations. The general objective of the TMs was to ensure the project's implementation according to the project's budget, schedule and Erasmus+ rules. Moreover, each of them had particular, detailed objectives connected with the project timeline and current needs of partners. The transnational meetings and the regional coordinators cooperation played a key role in the evaluation, monitoring and management process. Finally, within the project, we included a dissemination phase consisting of a series of local events held online or in-person. They allowed partners to disseminate information about the project's outcome, the activities that had been carried out and the experience and knowledge gained in ME-Health. The dissemination events targeted the representatives of the schools, education sector, local administrations, associations and other stakeholders from the education and mental health sector. Furthermore, during the whole initiative, all the partners promoted and informed about the project's implementation, currently carried out activities, its goals and results.

The ME-Health project achieved tangible and transferable results. The main result is “Good practices guidebook” which presents model/knowledge base for supporting school teachers/professionals working with teenagers in identifying, describing and searching how to solve psychological and pedagogical problems among adolescents in connection with the coronavirus pandemic and changes in functioning of the education system in times of the pandemic in the EU. This result (its solutions, tools and best practices) is already used in schools of the ME-Health’s partnership. The outcome has a form of a digital document (PDF format), easy to access and download from the websites of the project partners (as well as EPALE and Erasmus+ Project Results Platform), available in English and all national languages of the project partners (Czech, French, German, Dutch and Polish). The guidebook consists of several chapters: 1. Identification and description of the most frequent psychological and pedagogical problems that appeared among young people due to the COVID-19 crisis and changes in education 2. Solutions to tackle the most frequent psychological and pedagogical problems that appeared among young people due to the COVID-19 crisis and changes in education. 3. Tools 4. Lists of institutions in all partner regions Moreover, the project partners and its representatives gained extensive experience, knowledge and know-how thanks to best practices and experience exchange across the partner regions. It was possible thanks to study visits of the partner organizations and associated organizations, participation in the workshops and fruitful discussions being a source of inspiration for other partners. The partners learned about transferable solutions (strategies, recommendations, digital tools and instruments, ways of dealing with psychological and pedagogical problems in other EU countries). The experience gained within the project, perspective and solutions presented in the guidebook, as well as dissemination of the results are wider than expected thanks to participation of Rijn IJssel, associated partner from the Netherlands. Finally, as for certain partners and/or participants ME-Health was the first European project they took part in, this initiative expanded their network of contacts and horizons when it comes to opportunities for collaboration within EU funded projects.