Webinar highlights: Tackling Mental Health Stigma Through E-Inclusion

ADVANCE: 

• Language matters: framing interventions around well-being, self-care, and learning decreases stigma and increases engagement more than “mental health problems.”
• Technology alone cannot solve stigma — stigma reflects broader structural processes of exclusion.
• Intersectional inequalities (income, education, race, geography, language) shape stigma and mental health.
• The project puts equity at its core using the PROGRESS-Plus framework.
• Future trials will assess how equity factors interact with stigma and implementation
  strategies.

• Youth vulnerability: High rates of depression and anxiety (40% of 9th graders in CZ) make adolescents a priority group.
• Arts-based approach: Combines storytelling, creativity, and technology to reduce stigma and engage youth emotionally.
• Avoiding labels: Intentionally avoids diagnostic language (e.g., “depression,” “anxiety”) and focuses on subjective experience and self-expression.
• Challenges of inclusion: Technology can both enable and limit inclusion, accessibility, and digital literacy vary widely.
• Diversity awareness: Adapts activities to social and educational needs of different classrooms and communities.

• E-inclusion ≠ de-stigmatisation: Access doesn’t automatically mean reduced stigma; shame can persist even in digital spaces.
• Language framing: Focus on well-being, resilience, and emotional regulation rather than pathology.
• Co-production: co-create tools and interventions as ambassadors and experts by experience with young people increases trust and usability. Tackles stigma by involving youth directly in decision-making and design.

• Developed with young people, families, teachers, and policymakers through co- creation.
• Resulted in the IMPROVA platform, an easy-to-use digital space with modules for adolescents, teachers, and parents.
• Reduces stigma by teaching about mental health and debunking myths.
• Promotes well-being rather than focusing on “problems.”
• Modules address real-life stressors (social media, breakups, school pressure).
• Teachers’ modules emphasise self-care, compassion, and communication with
  students.

• Strong focus on inclusiveness, ensuring support reaches everyone, regardless of background.
• Central tool: Mentina, a smart mental health app using AI for personalised, ethical mental health support.
• Supports everyday stress management, not only diagnosed conditions.
• Combines digital tools with community-based support.
• Targets vulnerable groups (youth, migrants, long-term unemployed).
• Aims to build a more inclusive, responsive mental health system.

• Focuses on psychoeducation, destigmatisation, resilience, and social participation.
• Addresses mental health gaps for underserved and excluded populations.
• Strong co-production model advisory committees with end users and experts in every country.
• Prioritises cultural adaptation ensuring interventions feel relevant and meaningful in each context.
• Emphasises community engagement and responsive design over one-size-fits-all models.

• Includes four components: companion app, serious game, open knowledge platform, and decision support system.
• Promotes self-care, engagement, and skill-building.
• Aims to normalise mental health and make access proactive.
• Guided by lifetime approach to mood disorders.
• Co-designed and collaborative, with over 500 stakeholders engaged.
• Currently starting pilot implementations across seven countries.

ASPbelong (Alžběta Šašinková): Uses co-creation and creative workshops with youth and teachers to design digital tools that feel safe and relatable. “Technology is a native language for young people. When we speak it with them – not at them – we help normalize their emotions.”

RECONNECTED (Asmae): Works with migrant communities to address digital exclusion and cultural stigma by co-designing and adapting tools to their languages and contexts, building trust and relevance.

SMILE (Vincenza Frisardi): Promotes gamified wellbeing tools that focus on everyday wellbeing rather than mental illness, helping reduce stigma and encourage early engagement. “We normalise everyday distress but must avoid trivializing serious symptoms.”

MentBest (Hanna Reich): Stressed that digital inclusion must go hand in hand with ethical design, data transparency, and explainable AI to maintain trust and prevent new exclusions.

ADVANCE (Prasansa Subba): Combines self-paced online modules with weekly human check-ins. “Digital tools alone can’t remove stigma. But paired with empathy and real conversation, they make help-seeking safer.”

ASPBelong (Alžběta Šašinková): Warned that technology can create new barriers, such as teachers feeling unprepared for emotional discussions; her team now includes educator training to address this.

BOOTSTRAP (Nick Morgan): Noted that access doesn’t equal acceptance. “Young people might use apps in secret because they’re still ashamed — inclusion improves access, but stigma remains without cultural change.

Catrin Finkenauer (Improva): Noted that digital tools support early prevention but often benefit more privileged youth, creating a “rich get richer” effect. “Digital care works best when connected to real-life relationships — a hug, a conversation, a teacher who asks how you are.”

Vincenza Frisardi (SMILE): Emphasized low-threshold access for safe, private engagement but warned that over-normalizing distress may delay help-seeking. SMILE includes referral prompts and clear safety boundaries.

Nick Morgan (BOOTSTRAP): Agreed that e-tools should bridge to, not replace, therapy. “You wouldn’t fix a broken leg with an app — but digital tools can start important conversations earlier.”