Know Your Normal
What is Know Your Normal?
In 2017 the Youth Council and myVoice volunteers unanimously decided that they wanted to run a campaign around mental health.
The Know Your Normal campaign aims to reduce the stigma around mental health and create resources for autistic young people to work out and understand what their normal is.
The research behind Know Your Normal
Youth Patrons were involved in collaborative research with University College London (UCL) Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE) to produce a research report about the mental health struggles that many autistic young people face and the care that they have received.
Read the Youth Patrons' report of their experiences and research and read the full research report, which was published in the Autism Journal in 2018.
Know Your Normal toolkit
Alongside the report, the young people designed a tangible Know Your Normal toolkit to help young people outline what their 'normal' is so they can explain to those who support them when they aren't feeling themselves.
Know Your Normal youth lecture
Youth Patrons also hosted a lecture to talk to professionals, young people and parents about their Know Your Normal toolkit and the research findings.
At the lecture, hosted on 27 March 2017 the Youth Patrons:
- presented the findings of their joint research with CRAE about the experiences of mental health and wellbeing of autistic young people
- shared their stories of what 'normal' means to them
- presented the resources they developed to support autistic young people to tell people around them what 'normal' looks like to them
- offered opportunities to ask questions of our expert panel.