What are we working on?

Since September 2023, 13 young men have attended the Young People’s Forum. We have held 24 forum sessions over 73 hours of workshops, and eaten a lot of delicious food. We’ve created men with Lego, played snakes and ladders and quizzed ourselves Who Wants to be a Millionaire? style. We’ve talked about mental health, and societal expectations, role models, identities, stigma and why we decided to be part of this unique research project.

Along the way we’ve all learned a lot about each other and about young men’s mental health. The project team have learned a little about what it is like to be a young man in Scotland today and the forum have learned a little about how to do research.

In addition, the Forum has undertaken research with our peers. We’ve spoken to 20 young men about mental health and taking part in mental health research and 40 young men have completed our anonymous survey. We’ve held research conversations with young men in art galleries, offices, prisons, the park and online. We’ve spent time listening to what everyone has had to say and we’ve analysed the conversations to identify what are the common issues that people have been telling us about.

We’ve met with our partners (Man On Inverclyde, Includem and YouthLink) to share our early findings and these organisations listened to what we have to say and are now thinking about what changes they can make to better support young men’s mental health.

We are now busy writing reports and other outputs and thinking about how to share what we have learned with a whole range of different audiences, including: boys and young men, parents and carers, people working in mental health, schools, other organisations and even politicians and influencers!

We plan to hold some events and share our findings with people across Scotland in April and May 2025. Watch this space!

In the meantime, if you want to get in touch, or have an idea for an event you can contact us using the buttons below.