Flanders’ first Red Nose Day: laughter with a serious message
TV channel VTM, radio station Q-music and Belfius bank have teamed up to launch Red Nose Day, a huge charity campaign in support of young people suffering from depression and other mental health conditions
Breaking the taboo
On 5 December, TV station VTM and its partner radio station, Q-music, will host a show featuring Flemish actors, comedians and artists. They promise an evening of first-class entertainment, laughter and a lot of silliness. Through sketches, parodies and music, the aim is to create awareness about a difficult contemporary issue.
Of course, you can’t just laugh off depression. But experience has shown that these benefit shows are much more successful if they have a positive vibe. So, although the show will be frivolous, the goal of the campaign behind it is deadly serious: to raise as much money as possible to help young people deal with psychological problems.
The campaign – raising money for a serious cause by putting up a funny nose – comes from the UK, where Red Nose Day is an annual tradition. After the Netherlands adopted a similar campaign in 2011, De Gekste Dag (The Craziest Day), it’s Flanders turn to host its own Rode Neuzen Dag.
Trying to be strong
In recent months, events in Flanders have made us sit up and take notice: a boy committed suicide after being bullied at school, a girl was held in a jail because there was no room for her in youth psychiatric services… Taken with the region’s alarming suicide statistics, including among youngsters (the number of suicides is 1.5 times higher than the EU average), it’s clear there’s a lot of work to be done.
We must encourage young people to talk about what troubles them
The numbers are frightening. One in five young people in Flanders struggles with a psychological disorder, and one in 20 needs specialist psychiatric care. “One of our targets should be to prevent those from the first group ending up in the second group,” says Peter Adriaensens, a child and youth psychiatrist at the University of Leuven who has written several books on successful parenting.
“We should really avoid youngsters having to go to a psychiatrist,” he continues. “It’s important that we encourage young people to talk about what troubles them. In Flanders, however, we’re not used to this. We’re always trying to be strong.”
Collecting money isn’t the only goal of the first Flemish Red Nose Day. “It’s important that we break the taboo around psychological problems in young people,” explains Adriaenssens. “I’m pleased that humour will play a central role in this campaign because it can be an important instrument in this mission. It’s the language of youth, so I like to see it connected with this serious issue.”
Therapeutic conversations
In the build-up to the December show, people will be able to support the campaign by donating money outright or by buying a red nose. The noses will be for sale at Belfius, the bank that’s organising the campaign alongside VTM and Q-music. But people can also apply to the organisers to sell noses themselves, or to set up their own collections.
“For every 100 noses we sell, we can help one youngster who’s in trouble,” says actor Jonas Van Geel, who will present the show on VTM. The funding will allow youngster to get free psychological help.
One of the organisations that will use the money collected on Red Nose Day to provide that treatment is Tejo (Therapeuten voor Jongeren, or Therapists for Youngsters), which specialises in providing accessible therapy to youngsters aged between 10 and 20. The help is immediate, short-term, free and anonymous.
Tejo operates a number of houses where young people can calm down for a while, helped by professional therapists who work on a voluntary basis. Five years ago, the first Tejo house in Antwerp opened, and there are now three more: in Ghent, Mechelen and Ronse.
“Here in Antwerp we welcome between 500 and 600 new youngsters every year,” says Lieve Van Boxem, communications manager at Tejo Antwerp. “We try to help more than 700 youngsters a year. That means that since the opening of our house in 2010, we’ve had more than 10,000 therapeutic conversations.”
Long waiting lists
So how does it work? “Youngsters who come to us are immediately assigned to a therapist,” explains Van Boxem. They can receive up to 10 free sessions. The average number of completed sessions at the moment is four.”
In court, I asked myself: What if these youngsters had got help sooner?
Do the people at Tejo share the feeling that there’s a tidal wave of young people needing help? Van Boxem: “I don’t know all the numbers. But I can say that since the turn of the century, the number of people in youth care has more than doubled – to 27,000 right now.”
The woman behind Tejo is Ingrid De Jonghe. She is now a professional therapist, but before she founded Tejo, she was a lawyer in youth court. “There I witnessed how long waiting lists for psychiatric help can often turn relatively small problems into something uncontrollable,” she recalls. “While I was in court, I often asked myself: What if these youngsters had received help sooner? I now know the answer. Young people who are in the midst of a crisis need fast and efficient support. We’re not helping them by putting them on a waiting list for three or six months.”
When De Jonghe founded the organisation five years ago, she had a crew of 30 youth therapists and administrative staff, all of them working as volunteers. Now she can call on more than 100 people at Tejo Antwerp alone, in a townhouse in the city centre.
As the organisation is growing and more Tejo houses are planned elsewhere, every form of support is welcome, so that young people in trouble can keep finding their way to one of the houses and find someone with expertise to listen to their troubles.
So if you’re walking down the street in the coming months and see a stand selling red noses, you know what to do.
Photo: Radio hosts Sven Ornelis (left) and Maarten Vancoillie will present a special Red Nose Day show
About the author
Health-care system
national health-care system is born
percent of salary employees contribute to social security
to 75% of healthcare costs reimbursed by mutuality
- NIHDI
- European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
- Crossroads Bank for Social Security
