“You are welcome here, and people are ready to help you”
How talk2ok.by — the platform of psychological assistance for young people — works
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In Belarus, 26 per cent of young people aged 15 to 19 have suicidal thoughts, and 18 per cent of young people have depressive symptoms.*
Children are very vulnerable at this age. Change is happening everywhere: from your own growing body to your familiar environment (exams, college, university). Going through all this with the support of significant adults, a person becomes more confident and calm. It is good if there is such an adult: mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, coach, teacher, beloved aunt or uncle. The one who will definitely listen to you, the one who will accept any of your stories and any you. However, if there is no support, then all complex psychological processes will aggravate.
The person who will listen, support and say “it's okay” could be a psychologist or a peer counselor. Now you can contact them online completely free and confidentially. UNICEF in Belarus, with the expert support of the Republican Center for Psychological Assistance under the Belarusian State Pedagogical University, has launched the talk2ok.by online platform, through which adolescents and young people can get qualified psychological assistance.
The platform offers psychological support in the form of online counseling: audio and video chats, and text messaging with peer counselors. The online format is the closest and most accessible for teenagers: they communicate with each other this way, because it makes them feel safe.
We have talked with the platform psychologist Tatyana Kolos about how the platform works, who are the peer counselors, what psychologists cooperate with the platform, and where you can get to know it in more detail.
About psychologists
About 30 psychologists collaborate with the platform today. There were certain selection requirements to them. These were documents proving higher specialized education and at least 3 years working experience. Psychologists filled out an application, and then they were interviewed. If the interview was successful, the psychologist could undergo training on how to work with the platform, and then proceed to counseling.
Training is very important. All psychologists who provide counseling have worked with adolescents, but not online. Some of them were experienced in hotline counseling, others personally practiced some online counseling, but online counseling was a new format for them still. Training was necessary to explain how the platform worked and what were the particularities of online counseling. It is difficult when you can't see the person in front of you. In addition, it was necessary to little update the skills of working with adolescents in crisis conditions.
All psychologists are supposed to have supervision (to be supervised by a more experienced psychologist), including personal and group supervision. Such supervision meetings are used to discuss what difficulties psychologists face. The names of boys and girls are not discussed in supervision, since all personal data is confidential.
Each psychologist her/himself decides when s/he can counsel. All psychologists are employed at other places concurrently; therefore, they do online counseling in their available time slots. Some of them do this on weekends, and others do this on weekdays. It is challenging to get an urgent psychologist’s appointment. If you need immediate help, you should use the hotline. All hotline numbers are posted on the website.
About peer counselors
Peer counselors are not psychologists, but peers. They do not provide psychological assistance: they communicate and provide support based on their personal experience. Their task is to listen carefully, talk, and refer people to a psychologist if they feel it is needed.
Today all peer counsels on the platform are students of the Institute of Psychology. After all, it is very important that they understand how to counsel: they need basic psychological knowledge.
Peer counselors were trained, too. We additionally dwelled on the complex requests that they could face, talked about the chat rules, introduced them to online chat counseling. They will not only have no video contact with the people (like psychologists in audio chats), but they will not even hear them. Chat counseling is hard work.
About the platform user age
There is no way we can monitor who signs up for a psychologist, especially when it comes to counseling without a video. However, in Belarus, psychological assistance for children without notifying the parents may only be provided to 14 year olds or older adolescents. Children under 14 need parental permission. That is, children under 14 may not come to a psychologist for an appointment at their own initiative. However, a child may call a child hotline or contact a website psychologist.
As for the age ceiling: most likely, the psychologist will refer an adult to another specialist. However, if a parent needs counseling because of her/his child or adolescent, then, of course, the parent may get counseling.
A peer counselor is unlikely to reject a conversation with a person of any age, but in general, all the platform operations are focused on adolescents.
About self-help
If a young person finds it challenging to contact a specialist even in a text or audio/video format, then the person can read more on the website. The website has FAQs by adolescents: about self-doubt, about dissatisfaction with their appearance, about bullying and cyberbullying, about relationships with parents. These are the questions most frequently asked by teenagers in their daily life.
Finally, I want to say that psychological counseling is
great and absolutely normal. In today's world, any person
who wants to be successful should work through her/hisemotions and challenges.
Even psychologists have their own psychologists. There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Especially today when you can get help privately and online.
UNICEF in Belarus organizes a free UNICEF Talks conference on December 11 to talk to teenagers about psychological challenges and how to take care of yourself. There you will be able to discuss self confidence with actor Yegor Sizov and child psychologist Galina Shvets. You will discuss how to stop worrying about your appearance with stylist Lilia Richter and psychologist Victoria Kryachko. You will talk to popular blogger Vlad Kobyakov who will share his story of how he copes with difficulties and takes care of his psychological health.
* Based on the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) conducted in 2019.
