Created by young people at Lisburn YMCA as part of their ‘What is STRONG with me’ project – Truth Hurts is a youth led podcast, exploring mental health and emotional wellbeing.
Eight young females participated through the ‘What is STRONG with me’ project over an intensive 9-month journey in the lead up to launching the podcast. This journey involved a range of workshops exploring trauma informed care, understanding mental illnesses & the causes, developing communication skills & interview techniques and carrying out a needs assessment to ensure the themes covered were relevant to the listeners.
The young people themselves picked the topics/themes for the podcast, due to their first hand experiences, societal emerging needs and the outcome from the needs assessment, with the aim is to help educate, empower and provide advice for other young people, parents, professionals and the community if they ever encounter similar experiences.
Young people believe that more support and advice is needed, as was their experience when going through their personal mental health difficulties. This led to the foundation of the questioning to ensure the right information was being drawn out in the podcast. They felt strongly about ‘shining the light’ on taboo topics, providing support services that the listeners can access themselves without having to wait months or years on an appointment.
Series one of the podcast focuses on the following topics:
- A mother experience of losing a son to suicide
- A young woman’s experience of addiction to alcohol that started when she was 12
- A young Man’s experience of the challenges he faced for being Gay and contracting HIV
- A young woman’s experience of being in a coercive & domestic violence relationship
- A mother with postpartum and traumatic teen mum birth
- A mother’s experience of a child with Autism and Pica
- A mother’s journey with her 16 year daughter with anorexia
- How a traumatic event led to crippling anxiety and depression that prevented her from leaving home for 6 years
Listen to episode 1: A Mother’s experience of losing her son to suicide
New episodes released monthly
