By the time I’m writing this text, we have completed four YAM programs in the city of Kongsberg, Norway. After the first three weeks of YAM, we are convinced that the program is a great tool for creating more awareness of mental health. The teens we met during the program got to explore different emotions, thoughts and actions, with exercises that are unusual in typical academic settings. So far, the pilot has revealed engaged young people ready to talk, reflect and share their views on otherwise the little discussed topic of mental health. With the promising start of YAM in Norway, we hope the program will become a functional tool with no expiration date for the teens that we met during the past three weeks.
Project Pilot
The journey toward meeting the first four classes from a junior high school in Kongsberg municipality has been a long one. A year ago, in February 2019, Mental Helse (Mental Health) organization in Oslo invited dedicated volunteers to learn the method of YAM during one intensive week of training. I was lucky to be one of the volunteers. A year later, thanks to the hard work of the Mental Helse organization in Oslo, Mental Health in Mind (MHiM) and Kongsberg, the first municipality to implement YAM in Norway, the program is now being rolled out in four junior high schools as a pilot project. The program is set for 9th and 10th graders at the school, and the first two classes that we met summed up to about 53 students in total. Veronica from Mental Helse and myself shared responsibility for the two first groups, where we switched between being main facilitator and helper.
Free to be yourself with YAM
In Norway, we have a saying: “When the cat is away, the mice dance on the table.” So, when the teacher was away, how did the students reveal themselves? A superficial summary of our observations could be that we met the engaged ones, the shy ones, the cool ones, the nerdy ones and the loud ones. However, by the end of third round of YAM we got to know the young people in a different way, at least that’s how it felt to us as facilitators. Names came into mind easily when conversing and summarizing the weeks together, and we found new perspectives on initial labels and stereotypes. The loud ones surprised with dedicated acting in dramatic role-plays, and when summarizing the play, revealed reflected views on how the characters in the play must have felt and why. The cool ones shared honest opinions on difficult topics with the group. One of the students mentioned in last session with a smile: “It’s nice to talk about this stuff in class, it feels like we are one big family.”
Our experience as facilitators is that openness in a classroom about otherwise stigmatized topics of mental health such as suicidal thoughts, made the topic less scary and taboo, and allowed the teens to become more open to share their thoughts and opinions. As some of the students had mentioned in the Closing Session, YAM had given them an opportunity to become aware of situations they otherwise would not have noticed. Even if one specific situation the students had in mind turned out to be a false alarm, the awareness of seeing others and reaching out is a win already, if you ask us.
Building communities with YAM
Can YAM contribute to building communities, and influence labels and stereotypes that classmates and teachers otherwise experience in a classroom? This is one of the questions that came to mind after the first round of YAM. Together with the students, we managed to open a channel of communication between the teens, beyond the typical classroom setting. Without a teacher, who’s not only responsible for spreading knowledge, but also holds the power to punish and reward, and without expectations of right or wrong answers from the teens, what was left was a group of young human beings in a room, gathered to get to know their inner worlds, and each other. They explored serious topics such as depression and suicide and learned how to deal with unpleasant emotions. Furthermore, exploration took place in a safe environment, with curiosity, openness and fun. The young people participating got to express themselves freely with little as possible judgement from us as facilitators. Perhaps stepping away from stereotypical classroom set up, and seeing each other in a safe and vulnerable setting, will give the teens an opportunity to see each other and be there for one another in other types of settings as well.
Personally, I experienced several aha moments during our trips to Kongsberg. One of them was when I used the bathroom during a break, where I overheard kids in the hallway talking to each other about YAM, as if it was an ordinary part of their day. It seemed as though YAM was welcomed by the students more than we had hoped for. Later that day, during the sessions, the teens remembered plenty from previous sessions, both the presentation and role-plays. They shared their messages of how they take on daily dilemmas and guided us through the consequences of their choices. By the end of the final day of our first round of YAM, we were convinced that the program is beneficial not only for the teens we met during our first three weeks in Kongsberg, but that it has potential to spread positive awareness on the topic of mental health across Norwegian youth, making room for a new generation, generation YAM.
Post by Anastasia Fedotova, YAM Instructor