My name is Marie Duffy and I’m the editor with Ireland’s Youth Information website SpunOut.ie. For those of you who don’t know, SpunOut.ie works with 16-25 year olds around Ireland, and helps them to lead happy and healthy lives. We run various campaigns each year on issues such as mental health, sexual health, employment and alcohol and drugs, to name a few.
This week sees the launch of our latest mental health campaign around anxiety called Know Anxiety.
Here at SpunOut.ie we recognise the importance of looking after our mental health and how difficult that can sometimes be. We all lead busy and fast-paced lives and often our mental health is neglected until it becomes a major problem.
One of the things that young people have been telling us at SpunOut.ie is that they are experiencing high levels of anxiety and our fast paced life doesn’t help.
Anxiety and worry is a normal part of life, but if it is not managed properly it can take control.
Our ‘Know Anxiety’ campaign aims to address the issue of rising anxiety levels amongst young people in Ireland.
We want to help build the resilience of young people in Ireland by providing them with the information necessary to deal with anxiety issues.
The campaign is an information campaign which aims to inform our readers about anxiety and how they recognise it in themselves, family or friends. We want them to learn how to manage their anxiety and how to minimise it so that they can lead healthy and happy lives.
We have created lots of new content on different types of anxiety such as General Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder and phobias.
By getting to Know Anxiety we can reduce the stigma associated with it. If we recognise that everyone experiences anxiety at some time or another, discuss how we manage it and what we do to minimise it we can help each other to live happy healthy lives.
Check out our short animation on anxiety here: youtube.com/watch?v=mXlV8OVvrD8
The ambassador for our Know Anxiety campaign is RTE’s Eoghan Mc Dermott who has spoken openly about his own mental health struggles. You can see our interview in which he talks about his experience here:
We have loads of information about coping with anxiety and lots of Real Life stories from young people who experience anxiety and who share their tips on managing it.
I find our real powerful content comes from the real life stories that young people share with us. Often that’s where the real practical advice comes from.
For example, one of the tips a young person shared with us that really helps, is to keep an anxiety diary. They note down every time they feel anxious and what made them feel that way. By doing this they are able to see what triggers their anxiety and will then be able to work on minimising it in the future. As someone who uses writing a lot to process how I think and feel about different things I can really see how this can work.
Another young person told us that it was important that she told her friends about her anxiety. She felt having their support when she was at school really helped. You can read more practical tips on managing anxiety on SpunOut, aswell as video interviews with young people, Eoghan McDermott and mental health experts.
These might sound like really simple ideas but often it is the simple things we forget to do when we are anxious.
If you are interested in learning more about our campaign follow us on facebook.com/SpunOut.ie or Twitter twitter.com/SpunOut
You can find out more information on spunout.ie/anxiety
Support Our Campaign
We rely on the generosity of the public to fund our work and so far together we have achieved great things! Please do continue to support us so we can provide future generations in Ireland with the resources to recognise and talk about their emotions, and equip them to navigate the ever-changing world around them as they grow
