TAKE FIVE Conversation Guide: Five Minutes to Start a Real Conversation
How can communities create spaces where children and young people feel able to speak about mental health, isolation and even suicide before they reach a point of crisis? This question was at the heart of a meeting on 15 September between IFSW Global President Eva Ponce de Leon, Interim Secretary-General Pascal Rudin and Damien O’Brien, founder of The Mental Health Association Switzerland and the Coffee Foundation.
The exchange highlighted the continuing difficulty of bringing conversations about suicide and mental distress among children and young people into the open. In Switzerland, these subjects can remain difficult to raise not only publicly, but within families and everyday relationships. Eva Ponce de Leon also reflected on experiences in the Philippines, highlighting that mental health challenges, isolation and suicide among young people are concerns that cross national boundaries and require stronger community-based responses.
The Mental Health Association Switzerland and its Coffee Foundation are grassroots initiatives founded by Damien O’Brien and shaped by his own lived experience. His wife, Damaris O’Brien, brings another important perspective to their work: that of a carer who understands what it means to stand beside and support someone experiencing mental-health challenges. Together, these perspectives recognise that mental health affects not only individuals, but also partners, families, friends and wider communities. The Association works to make conversations about mental health easier, challenge stigma and help people recognise when somebody around them may be struggling. Coffee Foundation takes this work into everyday life, using something as simple and familiar as sharing a cup of coffee as a door-opener to conversations that too often never make it to the family table.
This approach has particular relevance for social work. Children and young people can experience loneliness, social isolation and mental distress across social and economic backgrounds. While their circumstances and access to support may differ significantly, creating trusted relationships and spaces in which young people can speak without judgement is fundamental to prevention and early support. Social workers, families, schools and communities can all play a role in noticing changes, listening and helping young people connect with appropriate support.
One practical example discussed was TAKE FIVE, a conversation-based initiative that encourages people to take five minutes to reach out and uses five simple steps: Talk. Active Listening. Kindness. Encourage Support. Check Back In.
Rather than expecting people to become mental health professionals, the approach seeks to give friends, families, carers, colleagues and communities greater confidence to start a conversation and connect someone with further help when needed.
Coffee Foundation reinforces this message through its distinctive coffees centred on themes including Fighting Stigma, Fighting Isolation, Fighting Prejudice, Fighting Judgement and Fighting Shame. The coffee itself is not presented as the solution; it provides an accessible way of opening the door to conversations about experiences that can otherwise remain hidden.
Left to right: Damien O’Brien, Eva Ponce de Leon, Pascal Rudin
Eva Ponce de Leon said: “For social work, mental health is inseparable from relationships, belonging and community. Children and young people need spaces where they can speak openly and know that somebody will listen. Whether in Switzerland, the Philippines or elsewhere, breaking silence and strengthening human connection must be part of how we support young people and their families.”
Damien O’Brien added: “We do not need to have all the answers to start a meaningful conversation. Sometimes sharing a coffee and genuinely asking someone how they are can open a door that has been closed for a long time. Our aim is to make these conversations part of everyday life, because stigma and silence should never prevent somebody from reaching out for support.”
The meeting explored opportunities for future exchange and collaboration, connecting grassroots experience and practical prevention initiatives with social work’s commitment to human relationships, dignity, inclusion and community-based support.
Small actions can help open important conversations. Readers interested in supporting grassroots efforts to challenge stigma, reduce isolation and make it easier for people to speak about mental health can learn more about the work of the Coffee Foundation and The Mental Health Association Switzerland, including ways to contribute to their initiatives.