Students

Mental health: Kavan, a podcast designed to help youth

Publié le 03 juin 2024 - Directorate for Legal and Administrative Information (Prime Minister)

In March 2024, the Health Psy Student launched the podcast Kaavan. Whether you're struggling with your own mental health or accompanying a loved one, you can listen every 2 weeks to a new interview with a personality, expert or anonymous person sharing their experience and practical advice.

Student Psych Health, created in March 2021, allows higher education students (whose training is recognized by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research) to benefit from 8 45-minute sessions per year with a psychologist, without having to pay any fees. The device also offers a variety of resource materials on social media to help people better understand and manage their mental wellbeing.

Since March 2024, Santé Psy Études also offers the podcast Kaavan. Every 2 weeks, celebrated and uncelebrated guests share their personal stories, tips and how they feel about their mental health today. One of the aims of the podcast is to allow listeners to identify with people who have experienced similar difficulties (anxiety, depression, eating disorders...), and find solutions to their problems.

Among the first guests:

  • singer Eddy de Pretto, who has been the victim of cyberharassment;
  • the clinical psychologist and art therapist Jérôme Lacinga, who especially discusses anxiety in the podcast;
  • Kim Lewin, a content creator who has experienced academic harassment, including eating disorders and depression.

The podcast is available for free on different listening platforms.

Please note

The name of the podcast refers to the elephant Kavan. After 35 years (including 8 years alone in a concrete paddock), this animal developed mental and physical disorders. In 2020, he and other elephants were moved to a sanctuary. He has since regained good physical fitness and seems to have regained a taste for life in contact with his fellow human beings. Kaavan’s story helps illustrate the importance of empathy and social connection to mental health.

What other psychological support measures exist for students?

Different devices can be used by students according to their needs, for example:

  • the National Student Support Coordination (Cnaé) which is a support, listening and reporting service for students suffering from discomfort or victims of violence (discrimination, harassment, gender-based and sexual violence, etc.);
  • Nightline which provides a listening service every evening between 8.30 p.m. and 2.30 a.m., as well as a chat, for students who simply need to talk and listen attentively at a given time;
  • Happsy Line which offers free online consultations (via webcam) with a psychologist, in partnership with certain academic institutions and Crous;
  • the Academic Psychological Support Offices (BAPU), which are present in most university cities and offer consultations 100% supported by the Social Security and Mutual Societies (each BAPU has a team composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and an administrative department);
  • the student health services who have a team of professionals to listen to the students, and if necessary refer them to appropriate support (in some institutions, the student health services themselves offer consultations).

The Crous also offer psychological support devices (on the site of each Crous, under the heading “Social Action/Health”, it is possible to consult the information and devices that are specific to the Crous in question).

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