Enhancing mental well-being and resilience in children, with a focus on young athletes, addressing mental health needs in educational and sports contexts, promoting children’s rights and informing policy development.
Context
Mental well-being is crucial to overall health, encompassing the capacity to recognize one’s potential, to manage life’s stresses, and to actively participate in community life. Youth sports offer an environment that can be nurturing and conducive to both physical and mental wellbeing. However, it is important to acknowledge that various psychosocial stressors and negative experiences may also be part of this context (Walton, et al., 20213). While sports can support development, they may also reinforce stress, gender stereotypes, and inequality; particularly girls and gender-diverse youth often face additional barriers, discrimination, and limited access to support. Children, especially young athletes, face increasing mental health challenges such as performance pressure and academic stress. Competitive environments can lead to anxiety, burnout, and emotional fatigue from an early age. MINDFIT promotes a holistic, rights-based approach to children’s mental fitness and early intervention; As EU Commissioner of Health and Food Safety, Mrs Stella Kyriakides mentioned: “You cannot separate physical health from mental health, you need to care for people in a holistic way”. The project aims to address the challenges faced by children and in particular young athletes and provide recommendations for the formation of policies to safeguard mental health and resilience of children.
Objectives
- To cultivate an inclusive environment through engagement with diverse stakeholders, enabling dialogue and co-creation that address the mental health needs of young athletes.
- To facilitate an exchange of knowledge across borders and disciplines, sharing best practices on mental fitness and support mechanisms in sports and educational contexts.
- To ensure alignment with European mental health strategies and principles, encouraging the adoption of mental health support practices across sports organizations.
- To enhance the expertise of national, regional, and local authorities in delivering mental health support to children and young people through targeted training and capacity-building activities.
- To promote awareness and shared responsibility in youth mental health via a series of mainstream and social media campaigns, as well as podcasts with multiple relevant stakeholders.
Activities
- Establishment of Local Forums of children, families, teachers, trainers, and coaches to understand their needs in regard to mental health through field research.
- Development and testing through a series of workshops of educational material for children’s mental fitness addressed at children and young athletes, as well as supporting materials for families and educators.
- Development and testing of an age-appropriate mobile app for children and educators.
- Capacity Building and provision of policy recommendations to stakeholders and policymakers, aimed at improving the mental health infrastructure for young athletes.
- Awareness raising campaign on the mental health of young people engaging key influencers and prominent figures within the sports community as advocates.
- Development of a series of podcasts, the ‘MINDFIT Talks’ with sports psychologists, educators in physical education, youth mental health advocates, and experienced coaches.
- MINDFIT Final Conference in combination with the Mental Health in Sports Cyprus Conference.
Resources
- Report on mapping local health support service providers, needs and expectations
- Educational materials and supporting tools for children and relevant stakeholders: interactive modules, guides and activities on building mental resilience and emotional intelligence
- MINDFIT mobile app for children and educators to provide mental fitness resources (incl. Script | Content Design Report | User Manual | Management Dashboard Interface)
- Policy recommendations and best practices manual
- Local action plans for integrating mental fitness practices within sports and educational settings
- MINDFIT Podcast Series.
Impact
- Enhanced dialogue among 30 children and young athletes, and 30 relevant stakeholders, including educators, sports organizations, and mental health professionals, to collaboratively address young athletes’ mental health.
- Improved mental fitness and coping skills in 350 children and young athletes, promoting resilience and emotional intelligence.
- Empowerment of 210 educators, coaches, and families, by equipping them with practical tools to promote mental fitness in educational and sports contexts.
- Ensure the direct application of mental fitness strategies by 35 trained educators positively impacting student-athletes through tailored interventions.
- Increased capacity of sports organizations and educational institutions to implement mental well-being support strategies.
- Showcasing successful mental health initiatives in sports, inspiring broader adoption across the EU.
- Raised public and stakeholder awareness about the importance of mental health in youth sports, supported by targeted campaigns and events.
Partners
- CYENS CoE (Coordinator, Cyprus)
- GDA Sports (Cyprus)
- INQUIRIUM LTD (Cyprus)
- Symplexis (Greece)
- UTH (Greece)
- CESIE ETS (Italy)
- RoT (Greece)
