Let's CEE!
For young people’s mental health and resilience in
Central and Eastern Europe
Why youth, why CEE?
Central and Eastern Europe is an emerging region with talented, multilingual young people with innovative ideas.Promoting wellbeing and preventing mental ill health ensures that all young people - and eventually all adults - thrive.Our region shares strong cultural and historical ties. It's hightime we leverage this connectedness to help improve mental health services for our youth.
We believe...
...that locally developed service models have the best chance to serve the needs of their beneficiaries.This is why we are creating a network of youth mental health hubs offering integrated and stepped mental health services to children, adolescents and young adults.We emphasise preventive care and social determinants of mental health.
We therefore work on...
Service development
We plan to develop a youth mental health service model that can be embedded into existing infrastructure in different CEE countries. We also aim to develop mental health prevention and promotion programmes that address local needs.
Advocacy
Without the early engagement of policymakers no change can happen on the level of health systems.This is why we advocate for investment into mental health in CEE settings and advise on effective policy for implementation.We are working on training opportunities to youth in our region to learn advocacy skills.
Research
We conduct research on the local understandings of and experiences with mental health and existing services.We envision putting CEE-based research and researchers on the global map of mental health science.
About our values
CEE-wide collaboration
We know that there is strength in our shared social and historical experiences. Through Let's CEE! we aim to offer time, space and capacity for everyone interested or working in youth mental health to come together.Working bottom up
We firmly believe that mental health can only really be improved when systems and interventions are developed based on local knowledge, with local talent, and with local resources.
The Let's CEE Team
Our network consists of young people with and without experiences of mental ill health, youth advocates, and early career and senior professionals supporting young people across the health care, social welfare and education sectors.Our members currently come from Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Slovakia, and Serbia - and we welcome any members from any CEE settings!
Snapshots to life with Let's CEE!
Our research
We conducted a scoping review of existing mental health prevention and promotion initiatives across CEE - through the World Health Organization's European Office's Youth Researcher Forum. We are currently working on a manuscript summarising the results.Led by Rita Adamik, we have also conducted consultations with youth from across our region about their experiences with mental health prevention. Check the results of this exercise below.
“We all have a lived experience” - a first roundtable discussion on lived experience with mental health through Let’s CEE in Budapest, Hungary
As a mental health professional or advocate, we often come across the term ‘lived experience’ in the literature and mainstream English language conversation around young people’s mental health. At Let’s CEE, a youth mental health-focused community committed to reshaping youth mental health, we come from across Central and Eastern European countries and diverse personal and professional backgrounds. As we connect and brainstorm ideas together as an advocacy organisation we kept coming back to the question as to how we all relate to mental health - what is our own lived experience? We also thought that this term needs some cultural refinement: it needs to be embedded in our local realities. This is exactly why we decided to centre a round table discussion around this very theme.Our event titled "What Does Lived Experience in Mental Health Mean for Young People in Hungary?" was hosted at the H52 Youth Office and Community Space in Budapest, Hungary. The aim was to build a safe and welcoming space for young people to reflect on the concept of lived experience and how it can become an integral part of mental health research, service design, and advocacy. We were joined by 12 participants, including youth workers, mental health professionals, activists, and young people with diverse experiences.“We all have a lived experience” - this was an overarching theme that we took away from the discussion. The participants agreed that lived experience really means the skill set of actively reflecting on what we are going through in life, and narrating it in such a way so that it makes sense to us. We also discussed that lived experience often becomes clear only in hindsight, once a sense of safety is restored after going through mental health-related difficulties. Participants also thought that connecting with others who have similar experiences fosters both empathy and healing. Several attendees highlighted how personal adversity can fuel activism, while others reflected on the emotional toll that engaging with mental health narratives can have.We also explored the differences between urban and rural access to services, the risks of over-identifying with one's experience, and the challenges professionals face when drawing on their own lived experience in a work context. Questions were raised about how to incorporate lived experience without placing the burden of expertise solely on those who have suffered.There was strong interest in low-threshold, community-based mental health services and peer support structures. The discussion concluded with a shared sense of purpose to keep these conversations going and co-create structures where lived experience forms the baseline to activism and services.