Youth Mental Health Lab#1 - Slovenia

Organised by PRIZMA Foundation, ZOOM (online), 27. 11. 2024

The first Youth Mental Health Lab in Slovenia brought together mental health professionals, school counsellors, youth workers, and advocates passionate about improving support for young people’s mental well-being. This interactive workshop, which showcased the participatory Mental Health Lab Methodology, began with participants sharing their feelings before coming together. This activity fostered an atmosphere of openness and trust—values central to many of the highlighted good practices and an environment where change can happen.

Discussions based on creative collaboration inducing methods then explored what currently supports youth mental health in Slovenia and identified areas requiring additional support, generating actionable insights to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Interactive exercises, inspired by best practices from the Meet Best Practice Catalogue, and thought-provoking questions energized the room sparking ideas for sustainable solutions and stronger support systems. The catalogue presentation emerged as a key highlight of the workshop. Participants offered valuable feedback on improving its usability and emphasized its strengths. Suggestions included making the content more visually appealing, ensuring consistent evaluations, and enhancing clarity for practical application, while the catalogue’s broad scope and information on common challenges as inspiration for new solutions were particularly appreciated. After thoroughly presenting three best practices from the catalogue that seemed most relevant to the group, participants rated these practices and the catalogue, discussed their adaptability to their work context, and reflected on possible challenges.

The lab concluded with a forward-looking discussion on advancing the project’s goals and participants sharing a single word to summarize the session, with terms like “inspiring,” “insightful,” “active,” and “collaborative” standing out. With this in mind, we believe the session marked a significant step forward in building stronger, more supportive formal and informal education environments and resources for youth mental health - fostering real change.