The upcoming 2026 Winter Olympics offer a great opportunity to expand the conversation around youth mental health on a global level by creating an awareness campaign that highlights how sports can be utilized to empower youth emotionally, provide stress relief, and create an environment of emotional well-being throughout youth.
Introducing the Coalition to Empower Our Future – a partnership with the Olympic Games to build a national mental health campaign for youth. The Coalition has created several public service announcements and advertisements designed to illustrate the correlation between coaches and mentors—who represent two foundational roles in the lives of youth—and the positive impact these individuals have on the emotional well-being of young people.
The primary example of this campaign is the “Jared” advertisement that tells the story of how many young people silently suffer in their lives but have support in the form of their coach. These ads are not only intended to raise awareness about the impact of coaches on youth’s emotional health, but they will ultimately serve as a repository for providing evidence-based resources and support for youth—not just quick fixes. Additionally, the range of provided resources is wide; physical activity on a regular basis, trusted adults in their lives, school-community partnerships, counseling, and digital literacy among others are included in the intended resources.
The campaign encourages parents and educators who watch the Olympics to use the youth mental health campaign’s messages as a call to action. The pressures teenagers are facing today—such as social media comparisons, online bullying, climate change, school pressure—are vastly different from those faced in previous generations. In addition, the campaign suggests that mental health is not a weakness, but rather a collective responsibility in which we can help protect mental health by listening to, checking on, and taking concerns about mental health seriously.
This campaign about mental health for young people uniquely spotlights people that are heroes on a daily basis, both at work and at play. The people in the spotlight include, not just clinicians (therapists, psychiatrists), but also physical education (PE) teachers, volunteer coaches, school staff members, and neighbours that have made the effort to show up often enough that they can observe when a youth is experiencing a change in their behaviour before it becomes serious enough for clinical needs.
The coalition supporting this campaign believes that it is equally important to invest in community programming/school-based supports as it is to have high-level performance training facilities for the youth of our country. Thus, with this perspective, it provides an Olympic way of giving young individuals the support system to enable them to get back on their feet when they “fall,” whether they fall on the field of play or off the field of play.
Source: Coalition to Empower Our Future – Campaign Overview
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