Galang nguruindhau, wunya, and g’day to IAYMH 2019! Welcome to Brisbane (Meanjin), Australia – a sunny city known for arts and culture, our street cafe scene, and a riverside lifestyle. We would like to acknowledge and pay our respects to the Turrbal and Jagera people and their Elders past, present and emerging, for they hold the hopes, dreams, traditions and cultures of Aboriginal Australia.

IAYMH 2019 is dedicated to bringing leaders from around the world together to discuss and promote change in youth mental health. We achieve this by empowering young people and strengthening youth voices throughout the event. The IAYMH conference in an opportunity to collaborate, share ideas, network and improve youth mental health internationally.

Over the years, we’ve focused on transforming the next generation of youth mental health and future-proofing it. Now it’s time to unite for global change! This year’s conference recognises that our members – young people, academics, and professionals alike – are all global citizens and our universal passion for youth mental health. By hosting IAYMH 2019, this is about our global approach to youth mental health and continuing to inspire world-changing ideas.

We want to see young people empowered and involved at all levels of the conference.
We want people to create networks, share their ideas, collaborate and gain ideas on how to improve the current mental health system for all young people.

How can you prepare for this year’s conference, you ask? There’s a number of different things that you can do to get involved! You can keep an eye out for our upcoming opportunities such as:

• Youth bursaries
• Checking out our IAYMH social media pages on Facebookand Twitter
• Finding out what’s on in Brisbane during October
• Pitching ideas on how YOU want to revolutionise youth mental health

We look forward to seeing you in October!

Minnie Vo and Kieran B. Drachenberg, IAYMH 2019 Youth Co-Convenors

Minnie Vo

Minnie is 23 years old and is from the sunny Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. She comes from a Public Health background where she has keen interests in youth mental health, health policy and research and CaLD health.

Over the years, Minnie has volunteered and worked with numerous organisations such as the Australian Red Cross, headspace, ReachOut Australia, Young and Well CRC and Family Planning. She currently works in the disability sector, where she supports carers.

With youth mental health, Minnie is passionate about community participation, encouraging positive help-seeking behaviours, and creating change to ensure fair and equitable access to mental health care. She is excited to be a IAYMH Youth Co-Convenor and is looking forward to meeting you all soon.

Kieran B. Drachenberg

Kieran B. Drachenberg is a young Métis transgender teen from Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. He originally comes from Dauphin, Manitoba, and has lived in a variety of places around Canada. He has been a strong advocate for the voices of aboriginal peoples of Canada, LGBTQ+ and for mental health.

His advocacy work began when he was in elementary school, organizing his first fundraiser to raise money for the earthquake in Haiti. He had always had a strong passion for helping the needs of others, and hearing about the way others around the world were suffering, he was moved to do something.

Since then, he’s become an advocate for Kids Help Phone, a non-profit organization based in Canada dedicated to helping youth with their problems through offering phone, online and chat-based counselling for free. He has been a strong fundraiser and vocal advocate for them, along as a member of both their National Youth Council and their Indigenous Advisory Council.

Along with this, he’s helped to share his experiences on a wider scale by appearing and sharing his story in the documentaries Two Soft Things, Two Hard Thingsand Bell Let’s Talk: In Their Own Words, where he talks about his experience as a transgender teen in Nunavut and his experience with mental health struggles, respectively.

He also recently became a member of Frayme’s Advisory on Youth Matters (AYM), where he helps to offer his Métis youth perspective on mental health and furthering knowledge, support, and information.

Having depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder, he believes strongly in sharing his struggles and experiences as a means to further knowledge, and as a way to destroy the stigma surrounding mental health.