Supporting Youth at Risk With Empathic Intervision

"Young people today navigate a world marked by constant and rapid change, deep inequality, and escalating mental health challenges. While these pressures are global, their impact is shaped by social, cultural, and economic realities. Meaningful responses, therefore, require more than risk management; they call for intentional spaces that nurture resilience, belonging, and personal agency. Integrating empathic intervision into youth support groups offers one promising pathway toward creating such environments."

"Empathic Intervision is a structured group process of dialogue, deep listening, and meaningful exchange. It moves beyond passive empathy and reframes it as a set of actionable, learnable skills. Facilitators intentionally create and maintain an empathic space. They demonstrate empathy toward group members while actively developing empathic skills among participants. The facilitator holds space for the full range of lived experiences present in the group and guides members to do the same for one another."

"At the core of this approach is integrative empathy, a five-part framework that combines emotional, bodily, and cognitive awareness to cultivate deep interpersonal understanding. It integrates self-awareness, relational attunement through physical synchronisation, reflective listening, imaginative perspective-taking, and creative application. In doing so, it reduces bias, deepens connection, and transforms empathy from a passive stance into an active group practice. The 5 Core Elements of Integrative Empathy Self"

Young people face rapid change, deep inequality, and rising mental health challenges shaped by social, cultural, and economic realities. Support groups provide structured relational spaces for processing experiences, building connections, and developing practical skills. Effective support depends on facilitation that intentionally cultivates empathy and teaches empathic skills. Empathic Intervision offers a group process of dialogue, deep listening, and meaningful exchange, with facilitators modeling and fostering empathy among participants. Integrative empathy combines emotional, bodily, and cognitive awareness—self-awareness, relational attunement, reflective listening, imaginative perspective-taking, and creative application—to reduce bias, deepen connection, and activate empathy as a group practice.

Read at Psychology Today