What if we just talked about it?

How young people from the Clarence Valley/ Northern Rivers made a campaign about mental health stigma, and why it matters for every generation.

There’s a video on the internet right now that started with a simple question: what would happen if people from different generations just sat down and talked honestly about mental health?

The answer – honest, warm, and at times quietly powerful – came from a group of young people from across the Northern Rivers,, who spent months designing, workshopping and filming something they genuinely believed could make a difference.

The batyr x Healthy North Coast campaign is live. And the story of how it got there is worth telling.

It started with a blank page

When batyr – a national organisation creating a world where all young people lead mentally healthy lives, approached Healthy North Coast to co-create a campaign about mental health stigma, they didn’t arrive with a finished brief. They arrived with an invitation.

Young people from the headspace Grafton Youth Reference Group were among those invited to take part. And over five to six collaborative workshops, they built the campaign from scratch – the concept, the format, the stories they wanted to tell.

“It wasn’t a set thing…But in the end, we decided to do a video. And it took a while to actually narrow down – we needed a specific topic, something we wanted to talk about.”

– Tom, Youth Reference Group member, headspace Grafton

They landed on stigma. Not just because it affects young people – but because they had seen, in their own community and in their own lives, how the fear of being judged stops people from asking for help at all.

From there, the format took shape. Intergenerational. Conversational. Honest. The young people didn’t want a polished script or a clinical message. They wanted something that felt real.

“We focused on stigma being the most prevalent thing affecting mental health. And the intergenerational concept – that was what the young people came up with. To see how that stigma changes throughout the generations.”

– Claudia, Community Engagement & Youth Participation Officer, headspace Grafton

A conversation across generations

The final concept was an interview format – pairs of people from different generations, sitting down together to talk openly about mental health, stigma, and what it means to ask for help.

Tom, at 16, was paired with a woman from an older generation. Two other young people each paired with someone further along in life – a parent, and two older women. Each pair filmed together for two hours at a professional studio in Tweed Heads. Eight minutes of finished footage emerged from those conversations.

It wasn’t easy. Volunteering to speak publicly about mental health takes a particular kind of courage – especially in a small regional town where, as Tom knows well, everyone knows everyone.

“Tom was certainly nervous going into it. It’s presented as a chilled chat to start with – but it’s still a bit different having cameras in front of you.”

– Claudia

Bravely, Tom was the only one from the planning group who also appeared on camera. Recruitment was harder than expected – finding an older male participant to pair with Tom proved difficult, and the campaign reflects the reality that not everyone is ready to share publicly. That’s okay. The people who did were generous beyond measure.

“There were four people in the planning process, including myself, and being involved in the video was completely optional. I was the only one from the planning process who featured in it.”

– Tom

What headspace Grafton hopes people take from it

headspace Grafton has a particular history in the Clarence Valley. It arrived during a significant time for youth mental health in the region, and in the years since, it has worked hard to shift the community’s understanding of what it actually is – not a crisis service, but an early intervention space. A place to talk before things get hard. A place to talk even when things seem small.

That message sits at the heart of the batyr campaign.

headspace is not a crisis centre. It’s more focusing on early intervention. You’re never going to get judged here. Come for the smallest of things.

For Claudia, the campaign represents something she has been working toward since she started in this role: a community that doesn’t just tolerate conversations about mental health, but normalises them. Where a young person can say they’re struggling without it feeling like a confession.

“Young people face a lot of pressures these days and so many mixed messages. It should just be accepted for people to come and have a chat with someone if they need to. It is free. It doesn’t cost anything. And they can come in a confidential way.”

– Claudia

She also points to something beyond the clinical side – the social connection that headspace Grafton quietly fosters through groups, events, and the Youth Reference Group itself. Connection, she believes, is its own form of protection.

The response

The campaign is now live – the full video is available on YouTube, with short clips rolling out on TikTok and Instagram. Promotion in schools across the region is planned.

For the young people who made it – who gave up their time, their privacy and their nerves to sit in front of a camera and talk about something that still isn’t easy to talk about – that matters.

For the young person in the Clarence Valley who sees the video and recognises something of themselves in it, that might matter more.

Watch the campaign: youtu.be/AmLh9ewaiYk

Find out more about batyr: batyr.com.au

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headspace Grafton is delivered locally by Health Voyage and is part of the national headspace network. headspace Grafton is funded by Healthy North Coast through the North Coast PHN Program.

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