Social engagement youth mental health

My path as a social activist in the field of children’s and teenagers’ mental health

Beyond my professional work, I am a social activist focused on children’s and teenagers’ mental health.

I became involved in this topic because I am a father of four children, one of whom struggles with mental health issues. We also have experience with suicide attempts and being - as the National Health Fund professionally puts it - “clients of the healthcare system at every level of support,” which in human language means we know many hospitals and centers.

The beginning

It started in July 2015, when our child’s crisis was so severe that we began looking for a psychiatrist. We managed to get an appointment at the Psychiatric Hospital in Józefów, and when we were driving there, I didn’t know that the child would stay there for many months.

I met other parents and patients there. At the request of one of the mothers, I created and ran a blog about teenage depression called “Porcelain Angels.” Amelia, for whom it was a form of self-therapy, described her experiences, but for me, this blog became the beginning of seriously engaging with the topic.

I involved journalist Ula Dziewit to edit texts sent by readers and pay attention to whether they might trigger the “Werther Effect” - a phenomenon that involves a significant increase in the number of suicides after the media publicized someone’s suicide. In other words, it’s the imitation of suicides.

Beyond editing, I bought photos from stock photo banks, and I also searched for information about procedures in crisis situations, what research we have, and why my child couldn’t get a sandwich with yellow cheese instead of white meat (because cheese is too expensive). I knocked on many doors then and was turned away many times.

However, this gave us visibility and contacts with the Children’s Ombudsman, the Patient Rights Ombudsman’s Office, and the Civil Rights Ombudsman.

This stage ends in December 2018, when Amelia, who was the initiator of the blog’s creation and the author of the name “Porcelain Angels,” deleted the domain because she was going to a new environment and no longer wanted to be associated with this topic. Some people moved to the “Teenage Asylum” blog, which was created a year earlier and still operates today, and I started acting independently.

First breakthrough - TEDx “Depression is the kidnapper of our children”

The first important breakthrough in my mind was the words of a certain “personal branding expert” who said I was doing very badly by speaking about mental health and that I should sweep it under the rug. Just like it’s done in every proper Polish family.

By then, I had already given presentations at a patient congress at the invitation of the Patient Rights Ombudsman’s Office, which several people actively supported us, and interviews in several media outlets.

However, I decided to submit the topic of teenage depression to TEDx. In 2019, I spoke at TEDx with the topic “Depression is the kidnapper of our children,” which has already been viewed by over 120,000 people, was translated into English, and placed on the TEDx Health channel as one of ten.

Second breakthrough - the snowball effect

TEDx caused significant social resonance, especially as the crisis in Polish child and adolescent psychiatry was growing.

Then someone who helped me most in publicizing this topic contacted me: ONET journalist Janusz Schwertner. He wrote many reports, and in 2020, the book “Scars. How the psychosystem destroys our children” was published, describing my and other parents’ stories of fighting for their own child.

Onet was the first to organize a debate during the economic summit in Karpacz.

In 2020, I was invited to participate in the psychiatry team at the Civil Rights Ombudsman’s Office as an “expert by experience.” I have been participating in the team’s work to this day.

Third breakthrough - the film “I Feel Nothing” and the book “Into the Depths”

In 2022, Janusz Schwertner together with Anita Bugajska shot a full-length film “I Feel Nothing” telling the story of parent-child relationships in situations of mental crisis and suicide attempts. For me, this is a breakthrough not only because it’s nice to act in such a real film and see how it looks from the inside, but because my child also appears in this film, showing publicly for the first time.

The film had its cinema and online premiere in November. Martyna Wojciechowska and her Unaweza Foundation became the film’s patron and promoter. I met Martyna a year earlier during a debate in the Senate and know that her daughter had experience with a friend in crisis. The helplessness in that situation was, as she herself says, the driving force to do something about it. The patronage was one of the first actions, and the “Young Minds” program was one of the next.

My child is not at the film premiere - they are in the hospital at that time. However, after the screening, something surprising happens to me: writer Katarzyna Bonda approaches me and says she wants to write a crime novel in which part of my family’s story will be recreated, with an insensitive head of department as the villain (in reality, after my child’s suicide attempt, we were thrown out of the hospital by SMS because the head of department wanted peace) and she needs my consultation.

I receive the first version of the book “Into the Depths” on May 27, 2024, and I cry as I read it. Corrections, another version, more tears, and the author’s hard work to make the spoken texts sound like patients speak, so no one would accuse her of just trying to use the topic to write another book.

Katarzyna Bonda achieves her goal of publicizing the topic in the way she knows best. She tells me that during author meetings, people approach her with several copies to sign, saying: “This one is for me, Ms. Kasia, and this one is for my sister because she has such a child, but we don’t talk about it in the family.” Just like with “Depression is the kidnapper of our children,” it’s easier to talk about other people’s problems or literary fiction than about what’s happening in your own family.

I become, along with my child, an ambassador of the “Young Minds” program and appear in an advertisement.

I am appointed to the Children and Youth Participation team established jointly by UNICEF Poland and the Children’s Ombudsman’s Office.

The project for access to psychological help for people under 18, which was initiated by the girls from “Teenage Asylum” and legally described by Monika Chorna-Cieślak, who was then still a lawyer at the “We Give Children Strength” Foundation, goes to the Sejm for reading. For me, this is the first time in my life speaking from the famous Sejm balcony.