IPcko

IPcko was established in 2012 as an online chat-helpline for young people. It served as an answer to the demand of people who wanted to talk about their problems through unconventional communication channel. This has been the groundwork for us and the approach we have towards psychology as our main target audience were young people - teenagers and young adults. We aim to connect psychology with technologies, offer it as an attractive service and most importantly make it accessible. For this reason, everything we do is anonymous, free of charge and round the clock. To this day our chatline has been our most successful way of reaching out to people as can be seen on the number of contacts in o... read more IPcko was established in 2012 as an online chat-helpline for young people. It served as an answer to the demand of people who wanted to talk about their problems through unconventional communication channel. This has been the groundwork for us and the approach we have towards psychology as our main target audience were young people - teenagers and young adults. We aim to connect psychology with technologies, offer it as an attractive service and most importantly make it accessible. For this reason, everything we do is anonymous, free of charge and round the clock. To this day our chatline has been our most successful way of reaching out to people as can be seen on the number of contacts in our statistic. During the pandemic the topic of mental health began to come into foreground of the Slovak public space and with it we have created multiple concepts of how we want to develop our work in the future. We have created a Crisis helpline - through e-mail and phone, to make it more accessible for other age groups as well. We expanded our view, focusing on people of all ages in crisis situations, while maintaining some key projects focused on younger audiences. Suicide prevention is our key objective and by creating widely accessible ways of how to contact us (eg. Chatline and phoneline) we can start the whole helping process smoothly. As the pandemic progressed, we also started developing our Crisis outreach team - KITIP, that went out into the field, especially to clients that needed it in centers where people were isolated for a certain period of time after their arrival from abroad. With enough safety measures we were able to arrange "in-person" meetings with the affected people. This team was established to also be a part of "crisis services" during mentally exhausting situations, such as search for missing persons, suicide attempts, car crashes and other tragical events. One of the most internationally known tragedy in Slovakia was the widely medialized terrorist attack last year in October, where we responded and helped the directly affected people but also the bystanders of the event. With the pandemic regressing one of the biggest demands was to offer services that are offline. For this specific reason we have established Crisis Intervention centers - Kacko. We created a safe place where people can have in-person sessions with psychologists and utilize different tools to cope with their difficulties. Each Kacko is created in the center of the city, with accessibility and visibility being the main 2 goals. It is important to create a comfortable place that feels exclusive as usually mental health is associated with old and worn-out psychiatric hospitals which discourages people from seeking mental health support. Lastly, I would like to talk about clubs and then tie all of these services together and give you context of how they operate and what is the rationale behind it. Clubs are safe spaces for young people where they can spend their free time engaging with different activities. There is always a regular program for each opening day (Wed-Sat) that is voluntary and people can decide to take part in it if they feel like it. It can be discussions, presentations, board games, tournaments, art/music-therapy, workshops, cooking, etc. All of these activities aim to help people develop, socialize and enjoy their free time while getting to know the psychologists working there. That is why all of the abovementioned activities are done with psychologists, clients can really get to know them and see them for the people they are. These clubs (currently 4 with 5th one on the way) are located together with Kackos, in case somebody attending feels like they want to talk about something in private. All of these projects are built with the thought of creating a coherent network of psychosocial support, crisis help and suicide prevention. I will demonstrate how this works on an example case. 18-year-old Dorothy contacts us with suicidal thoughts, claiming to be on train tracks and wanting to say goodbye. In serious cases such as this one there is never just one person working on them. Supervisors of the line assist the operator, contact the police or other departments if necessary and work together to come to a solution and minimize the risk of individual mistakes. Our client might be in a serious mental state and in such cases, we contact our outreach team. Naturally we first need to come into agreement about this approach with the client. If they agree, the operator - representing the team of people on the other side, stays in contact with the client until the outreach team reaches our client and continues the intervention. Part of this intervention are also Kackos and Clubs. Kacko gives clients option to schedule a personal meeting when they feel they need it. The clubs on the other hand give options to socialize with peers, utilize time meaningfully and feel accepted. Currently we operate Crisis helpline (e-mail, video and phone), crisis chatline "IPcko.sk", 9 Kackos (each regional city of Slovakia + Malacky) - soon opening 10th in Michalovce, 4 Clubs (Nitra, Presov, Bratislava and Trnava + soon opening Michalovce). Apart from these we also have online terrain workers that engage with people on discord and other social media. We are looking to expand in this idea a create a proper community online as well, with regular content on discord and twitch as to answer the needs of young people as they live fully-fledged lives both outside and inside the online environment. With the invasion of Ukraine, it felt just natural that this network of help that we are trying to create would respond and adapt to the situation. Our psychologists are present at the border crossings from Ukraine since the 3rd day and are present to this day. In addition, we have also established Intervention facilities in Transit center Michalovce and Hotspot Kosice. Our services are reflection of systematic gaps in our mental health system and therefore we don't see our projects related to the war as additional "short-term" opportunities but more like expansion of our current network and adapting it to the needs in our country. For this exact reason all of our services are available in Ukrainian language as well, with the only exception being the chatline on which we are not able to guarantee the same level of quality as on the Slovak version. We strive to create a systematic form of help that is available in each region with the ability to respond and adapt to different situations and crises. It is key to bridge the gap between the beneficiary and the psychologists by utilizing different means, in our case mostly technology, to make the feeling of attractiveness stronger than the stigma mental health faced over the past 40 years. It is in our best interest to make MHPSS available to everybody who needs it and not create exclusive forms of help available to only a certain group as that only deepens the tensions and supports false discourses. This is where we see IPckos mission currently within our national context. We do not only provide MHPSS services but also educate about how to handle different situations. We created multiple leaflets with coping mechanisms to utilize in difficult moments, educate parents about improvements in communication with children, work with schools - teachers, psychologists, students and other relevant actors on how to include Ukrainian students in classes, how to handle crisis situations (suicides or attempts) in school environment. Currently in Bratislava we have a training of directors of high schools about crisis intervention - they then appoint one person who will go through our accredited training and will be responsible for knowing what to do in crisis situation in the given school. To sum it up we do not see the intervention only as direct action in crisis but also as offering psychoeducation or alternative ways to spend free time and socialize. Only with this systematic approach focusing on all the different aspects can we create a network offering a safety-net to people who need it and actually provide the change to the system that crumbles.