Inside Out – Croatia (CroMSIC)

Name of the activity: Inside Out

Country/NMO: Croatia (CroMSIC)

Program: Mental Health

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Campaign

General description:

The project “Inside out” is based on peer education in high schools, promoting mental health and trying to raise awareness of the youth about the importance of mental health promotion, since it affects not only an individual and its environment, but the whole society. In addition, we want to diminish the omnipresent stigma surrounding it and provide a safe environment for further discussions on this topic among medical students, healthcare professionals and general population.

Focus area:

Mental Health among the general population

Problem statement:

In Croatia, in 2013, 692 people have committed suicide, including 17 people from 10-19 years of age. Suicide is third most common cause of death in age group 15-29, with over 20 attempts before.
Also, besides statistics, we noticed our close friends, family and other young people have been struggling with everything happening in their lives during adolescence.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

Our main target group are young people, high school students, aged 16-19 years and students. There are few groups of beneficiaries, besides high school students – medical students that conduct workshops for them, other students that attend mental health workshops and lectures, mental health professionals, general population, teachers, associates of schools and media.

Objectives and indicators of success:

• To raise awareness, reduce stigma and educate high school students and medical students about mental health
o Indicator of success:
 improvement in post-evaluation questionnaires compared to pre-evaluation questionnaires
 improvement of assesments on evaluation sheet of every particular workshop and educators
 positive feedback (online survey) of medical students after every workshop they hold
 positive evaluation of two day training for students
• To raise mental health awareness among general population and healthcare professionals
o Indicator of success: large number of people showing interest and attending our symposium on mental health

Methodology:

Previously well educated and trained medical students deliver series of 8 workshops to high school students, teaching them on prevention and promotion of mental health, with themes focused on self-acceptance, emotions, relationships, addictions, independence, responsibility etc. The duration of workshops is 45 minutes each, at 2 week intervals. They are held by the same pair of peer educator every time. There are approximately 740 high school students covered, from 6 different high schools.
Also, we organize additional lectures and workshops on important mental health topics for students and annual Symposium on mental health “I’m listening” for students, teachers, associates of schools and mental health professionals.

Plans for evaluation:

Questionnaire is given to students after every workshop, to evaluate satisfaction and usefulness of topics, and giving them the opportunity to take part in designing workshops according to their needs.
Second questionnaire is Self-Consciousness Scale (SCS) that is given at the beginning and at the end of series of workshops, and aimed to measure whether there were any changes in the way students are aware of themselves, their emotions, habits, etc.
Also, peer educators fill out evaluation sheet after every workshop they hold to give us feedback.