Popular ‘No Shame Board Game’ gets young Travellers talking

Youth worker Patrick McDonagh is involved in the No Shame Traveller Youth Mental Health project and he said the idea is to get people talking. The board game comes in standard size for playing on a table and in giant size for outdoors.

“The idea of the game is to facilitate free flowing conversation about mental health, without young people even realising it.”

It also gets participants thinking about their own lives and mental health.

“As you work your way around the board there are three types of cards you can get. One type are scenario cards, based on scenarios that young people would face in their teenage years. “Then you also have positive affirmations, and if you read them out loud they give you a good feeling about yourself.

“You also have emotion cards, to teach people about different emotions, and to help them express themselves. There are also ‘Five Ways to Good Wellbeing’ cards and if you get all five you win the game,” says Patrick.

There are black dots on the board, which represent dark times in life, and if a player lands on one they miss their next turn.

On the scenarios put forward, Patrick says, “There are different scenarios, like if someone asks you to smoke, what do you do then? Or, if you get accused of stealing stuff even though you didn’t, what do you do? You need help with your homework, but no one seems to listen, so what do you do? All of the scenarios have three answers to them.”

The No Shame Board Game was created by a group of teenagers from Trim, Co. Meath, with support from Involve – a youth, community and communications organisation working mainly with members of the Traveller community. The board game has since been recognised at the Traveller Pride Awards 2022 and the Education and Training Boards National Awards 2023.

From playing the game Patrick feels it is very helpful to young people:

“It is all about having fun while talking about your mental health in a free flowing non-judging way, while discussing real life scenarios that teenagers face, learning about the ways to good wellbeing and even naming emotions.”

The No Shame project has also developed ‘The No Shame Podcast’, which seeks to feature the voices of young Travellers, but Patrick says it has been difficult to progress it.

“The podcast has been slow to take off – a challenge is to get young people on it. While our campaign is called No Shame we do find that young people are reluctant to be on a podcast related to mental health.”

Some of the topics the podcast series will cover include stigma, conflict resolution, mental health and body image. There are currently three podcasts available in ‘The No Shame Podcast’ series – available on Spotify. ‘If you would like to be involved, you can fill out this short survey to help the podcast producers: https://forms.gle/WiZbAPR7UsciEojDA

In general, Patrick feels that shame around personal difficulties is a huge problem for the community.

“It’s very hard to break down the shame about speaking about your mental health. Suicide rates for Traveller men is seven times higher than for the general population, and for Traveller women it is six times higher.

In my opinion if people didn’t have the stigma around being depressed or being gay or whatever the case is; maybe the suicide rate wouldn’t be as high,” he says.

The No Shame Campaign’s second National Youth Mental Health Conference, held recently in Athlone, brought nearly 100 attendees together to address stigma and promote online empathy among young Travellers.

For more information about the No Shame Traveller Youth Mental Health project: https://www.facebook.com/NoShameYouthProject

You can also follow the project on TikTok.

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