Mental ESCAPE is a strategic partnership in the field of youth work that aims to promote awareness and mainstreaming mental health in youth work and society, by developing innovative tools and methods for youth workers to address addiction and depression. It developed through the COVID-19 crises, showing a need in discussing mental health, depression and addiction, loneliness and anxiety throughout social media within the medium that impacts so many young people negatively, but could also do so positively. We aim to create space within this for youth to openly discuss mental problems and support mainstreaming it in their bias.The project consists of two main parts, that are both extremely necessary to develop a sustainable and long-lasting approach. The first part consists of a broad research mapping that serves as basis for a digital campaign. The campaign aims to reach a European wide community, that consists of youth, educators and initiatives working in the field of mental health. Within it we will mainstream mental health, share important information, graphics and interviews with experts and young people suffering from mental illnesses. It will serve as space for discussion, support and as information hub.The second part will more focus on the educational part, in developing two physical and one digital escape rooms. As escape rooms are a very popular group activity, we see high potential in also using it as educational tool, to support youth in their development. Escape rooms with focus on depression and addiction are very rare, this is why we will also develop a manual for educators, so they can also use them for their youth work.The project consortium is formed by institutions and organizations active in youth work, clinical psychology and education with experience in mental health, campaigning, game based learning and training from Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey, Spain and a European network. Between 2020 and 2023 we will involve 10 researchers, over 80 youth workers and 400 youth in the creation and testing of materials. The project will engage over 250000 users between the campaign and escape rooms. Every consortium member directly supports youth in situation or at risk of exclusion, which will be actively involved in the design, implementation and sustainability of the results.Participants will on the one hand be youth workers and trainers, working in the field of youth, to support them in using new tools and methods in their work, with a specific focus on mental health. On the other hand we will have youth as second participant group, to create content for the campaign and test the escape rooms. We aim to have around 350 to 450 participants in total within 3 years.During Mental ESCAPE we will create:- a mapping of current state of affairs in mental health in youth and society.- a research of youth mental health as a consequence of COVID-19 isolation process.- a research of youth addiction to gambling and social media and intervention strategies.- a social media campaign to raise awareness and mainstream mental health.- two educational escape rooms with Augmented Reality elements to implement in commercial escape room settings.- an online version of the educational escape rooms to connect them with the social media campaign.- a final toolkit for youth workers to implement mental health interventions through escape rooms.Mental ESCAPE is a project implemented in collaboration with business in order to guaranty the sustainability of the creations in a European network of escape room providers and youth workers.Objectives are to:- support non-formal education as well as digital and analog forms of education. Hereby we aim to find the added value and complementarity of each other.- explore a new educational methodology and create an innovative educational tool for a broad range of young people, including those with fewer opportunities.- learn how to use the power of escape rooms as a tool of learning and building awareness, and developing a complete learning process on how to use them.- build the capacity of youth workers on the use of experiential learning processes and gamification for youth empowerment.To reach the best results following activities will be covered:- All partners will organize several multiplier events to share insights, outcomes and reach out to stakeholders- A blended mobility will support the content creation process for and with young people within the campaign- Further blended mobilities and staff training will support the development of the education escape rooms. Here, the rooms and the methodology will be tested and developed furtherAll outcomes will serve youth workers, youth and initiatives to mainstream mental health, learn new educational tools and build a European wide community. This way we will create a high impact on the topic, especially after the COVID-19 crises to support prevention of addiction and depression in the field of youth