Figures show that about a quarter of a million under-18s in England are receiving help from NHS mental health services. It is the first time this data has been recorded and it follows a reports that mental illness is soaring among women aged 16-24.
Children’s services are struggling to cope with demand. Research shows 28% of children referred for support in England – including some who had attempted suicide – received no help in 2015. Effective programmes are more important than ever and some have been started in schools and communities. Here are some of them.
Work in schools
There are a number of innovative programmes being run in schools to help young people with their mental health. Sacred Heart school in Tipton, for example, employed a happiness teacher last year: Samantha Rock. She got the title after the school linked up with the emotional resilience coach Jules Mitchell when a pupil’s parent died. Mitchell ran a happiness lab on a staff training day and encouraged teachers to start using the techniques on students. Rock teaches happiness, which is now part of the school’s curriculum. Her classes include mindfulness, dancing and a gratitude game.
Elsewhere, with the help of the Young Minds charity, what has been dubbed the academic resilience approach is being encouraged at Lincroft middle school in Bedford. After getting training from the charity, staff have introduced resilience building activities across the 881-pupil school, and mental health lessons are included in personal, social, health and economic studies.
The school has a wellbeing officer, working two days a week, who has made a big difference quickly, with both teachers and students. It has also introduced a system to keep track of children who are vulnerable and/or have anxiety issues, making sure they get the help they need before things get too difficult.
A teacher at the school, Cat Johnson, said: “The main difference is that we’ve made mental health and vulnerability normal and acceptable in our school and made it clear we will help those struggling. Behaviour has greatly improved as a result and our school is happier.”
Apps and websites
There are now lots of apps and websites set up for children who most need help. Silent Secret, for example, is a social enterprise that provides a free app through which people age 11-19 can share their secrets and thoughts online in a safe and anonymous way. It also helps young people with similar issues talk online and support each other. It has had more than 58,000 users since it launched two years ago.
Young Minds has launched a website called HeadMeds to help young people find out about mental health medication, asking the questions they might not want to ask parents or doctors. For example, a teenager might want to know whether alcohol can be consumed while using anti-depressants, or what the side effects might be. It includes stories of other young people who have taken medication and their experiences, offering general advice and guidance.
Parenting programmes
In the midlands of Ireland, in Longford and Westmeath, parents are going back to school to learn to help children with mental health issues, taking seminars and group sessions on various issues, including improving young people’s self-esteem or helping a child with ADHD.
It is part of the Triple P positive parenting programme, one of the world’s most extensively researched parenting interventions, developed at the University of Queensland, Australia, in 1982. It offers a range of programmes to parents, from a light touch, such as community seminars, to more targeted help, such as group seminars over eight weeks, and workshops. So if your child had depression you could go to a group talk about how to build confidence and self-esteem or you could meet a professional. It helps parents put strategies in place.
The idea of the programme, however, is to prevent these issues from arising in the first place. Mark Penman, who works for Triple P in the UK, said: “The idea is to get in early … rather than it getting to the stage where more serious mental health issues develop.”
Studies have shown the effectiveness of Triple P in lowering anxiety. The Missed Opportunities report by the Centre for Mental Health published in June highlighted Ireland’s success, calling for more programmes like this across the UK. A paper published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies pointed out that studies of humans and primates have shown that anxious offspring are particularly sensitive to the impacts of parenting, citing a study by Suomi (1997).
Self-help groups
Community-led projects have also been popping up around England, offering support to young people. In Exeter, for example, one woman, Debbie Humberstone, saw a gap in services and set up The Project.
“This support group exists because of my family’s experience,” she said. “My daughter developed severe mental health issues at the age of 15 (severe depression and anxiety, an eating disorder and self harm). She was admitted to inpatient care when she became suicidal at the age of 16 and spent five months in an adolescent psychiatric unit. To cut a very long story short, she is now coming up for 23 and lives a fully independent life. Jess (my daughter) helped me set up The Project in 2013, based around the support we wished we had had as a family, and the support she wished she had had access to.”
The project offers peer support groups for young people and a monthly support group for parents. It also provides mental health awareness talks and workshops to break down the stigma and discrimination around mental health problems.
Humberstone said: “We are being contacted almost weekly by people in other parts of the country asking if we run similar support in their areas. In fact, we are currently working on a model to replicate our service, to help other groups and organisations who are looking to set up something like we have.
“Money is always the issue. We received Comic Relief funding last year, which provides around half our funding for the next three years. We get no statutory funding, despite young people being referred into our service by schools, GPs, youth offending teams, social services and mental health services themselves. The rest of our funding is from local groups and organisations, plus some smaller grants.”
- In the UK and Ireland the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.
Help for children"s mental health, from apps to parenting classes
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