Psychological counseling on prescription for young people for mental health.

Purpose and goal

In the project we have explored the possibilities of how both the healthcare chain and civil society actors can achieve councelling accessible to all young people. We have found that the resources of civil society are an unused force that can work preventively and at the same time be a resource for public-funded health care. By gathering, strengthening and activating civil society, one can achieve a broad safety-net of actors to support the strengthening of resilience of young people to deal with life´s difficulties.

Expected results and effects

By creating a "safety-net" for mental health, you can catch young people who suffers from mental illness, instead of prescribing psychiatric interventions. By shifting the perspective from talking about mental illness to talking about mental health, resources can be made available to strengthen young people´s resilience through councelling. Not least important is that young people are involved in the design of the health care targeted to the youth, it is imperative to gain their confidence in the measures carried out.

Planned approach and implementation

By putting the spotlight on young people´s health factors, it was made clear that there is a lot of positive aspects to address. The project was limited to existential health as this is S:t Luka´s area of expertise. Contacts have been made with many similar initiatives which have given energy to the innovation environment. It was important to meet focus groups to shed light on the perspectives of young people, adults and the profession. By establishing test beds, a test environment for the activities is achieved, which is expected to lead to easier follow-up of the results.