PsykOBS – Denmark (IMCC)

Name of the activity: PsykOBS

Country/NMO: Denmark (IMCC)

Program: Mental Health

Type of the activity: Education

General description:

PsykOBS is an activity which focuses on communication between young people, so that to start up a dialogue, in which everyone feels comfortable to express their own thoughts and beliefs about mental illness and the taboo surrounding it.
The overall goal is to get more people to talk about mental vulnerability and illness like somatic illnesses and ultimately not be afraid to seek help for yourself and/or talk to others when found in the position of someone close to you facing mental illness especially.

Focus area:

Mental Health advocacy and public awareness

Problem statement:

Unfortunately, there is often a lot of taboo associated with mental illness in society which unfortunately prevents some people from seeking the help they need. Therefore there is a definite need for someone to take up these issues in order to reduce the number of people who abstain from seeking help as well as those who do not recognise mental illness in those close to them in fear of facing the taboo.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

Primarily at the moment we focuse on high schools in Denmark, meaning young people in the ages from 15-19.

Objectives and indicators of success:

We have a quantative goal of reaching out to 500 students per year as well as starting up two new departments within a year, with one of these starting in september 2018 whilst the date for the next one is yet unknown.

Methodology:

As mentioned above, we have startet a group specifically working on the start-up of the two new departments. Also we have reached out to a lot of high schools in order to promote ourselves and show what we do. The succes can be measured by us being contacted again by every school we have been to, which have subsequently wished for us to come back to teach more of their classes.

Plans for evaluation:

Up until now, the evaluation process has been performed by us sending out an excel sheet for the students to fill out immediately following the session, which has primarily been used for internal evaluation. However at the moment we are working on more creative evaluation forms such as interviews, videos etc., which will then be used for external evaluation as well, e.g. potential high schools, international evaluation such as documentation for IMFSA etc.