Youth Individual Sports Mindset
YouMind is a project funded by the European Union that aims to raise awareness about the importance of mental health in sport and to develop different strategies to prevent mental health issues for young athletes.
The ideas developed jointly with all of the partners will be presented in a form of promotional video and guidelines sharing the best practices with athletes and sport organizations. The project will last two years and will consist of various activities, such as workshops, surveys and meetings.
YouMind project partners are committed to healthy lifestyles and well-being in the sports community, recognizing the importance of mental health for young athletes.
The sports environment can be a factor in the development of mental health struggles for some young athletes.
The goals of this project are to:
- Raise awareness about the importance of mental health in sport and about mental disorders of young athletes and their negative impact on sport performances and private life.
- To give the opportunity to young athletes to speak up and voice their stories while enabling them to build connections with others in a safe space.
- Increase self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-empowerment.
- Encourage tolerance, understanding and proactive reaction from coaches
To reach these goals, an international cooperation of organisations with relevant experiences, knowledge and scaling impact will be required. To begin with, this project is dedicated to youth and so are all the partners. This set of partners will enable us to gather different points of view about mental health in sport specifically targeted for young athletes. Addressing mental health issues of sports athletes is an initiative that all project partners can benefit from and implement as a core value at their scale.
Therefore, the project has 3 main objectives:
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raising awareness about the importance of mental health in sports;
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developing different strategies to prevent mental health issues for young athletes;
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developing a guideline in the form of a digital leaflet and promotional video on the athlete’s experiences.
This project tackles the issue of the stigma around mental health struggles for young athletes and with that this project will fight for the recognition of mental health challenges for athletes and call for tolerance. All objectives will be reached through data collection, communication and workshops that will be organised.
The main outputs of the project are:
- Workshops
- Multiple productions from survey/workshops/open discussions: short videos, articles,
interviews, and testimonies that can be relayed in universities, sports clubs and at sports events
- Leaflet to recommend good pedagogical practices for current and future coaches
- Additional experience and data on how to organise conferences, workshops on the topic of mental health in sport during the partners’ future events
Overall, this project advocates for a better understanding of mental health-related challenges for young athletes. By raising awareness about the importance of mental health in sport, we hope that it will be one step towards lifting the stigma around this topic. The values supported by this project will be endorsed by all project partners.
YouMind is coordinated by the EUSA Institute (SLO). Project partners also include ENGSO Youth (SWE), University of Miskolc Sport Club - MEAFC (HUN) and University of Salerno Sports Center - CUS Salerno (ITA).
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Co-Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
