Mental wellbeing as a rainbow

A blog post written 17th February 2016

With children’s mental health week and young minds matter launched today by the Huffington post and the Duchess of Cambridge it’s great to see that these messages are getting out to the public.

Having worked for many years with children and families with poor mental health and addictions I have seen the devastating effects it can cause when young people are not taught how to take care of their wellbeing.

I agree that there is still a stigma attached to mental health issues and that having conversations and raising awareness with the public is an important part of breaking that stigma. I also feel that young people today are more aware than ever of mental illnesses and this can sometimes lead to self-diagnoses and further anxiety that there is something ‘wrong’ with them.

I see mental health as a spectrum, ranging from mental illness through to mental wellbeing. We are all on the spectrum somewhere and will move around from time to time. Sadly for some people they are in the red zone and need specialist support to help them improve their mental health. For young people, around 10% are in the red zone, suffering with a diagnosable mental illness and the rest are all other colours of the rainbow.

From what I am seeing working with young people in schools and in the care system is a generation that are anxious and confused and are struggling to cope with difficult emotions. They believe that they need someone else to ‘cure’ or ‘fix’ them as they have no trust in themselves. This is a mind-set that comes from us as a whole society, where we wait until something becomes a big problem before we do anything about it.

Which leads me to think do we need more counsellors or therapists for children and young people? I think the answer to this right now is probably yes, as we have children that are in the ‘red zone’ suffering with a mental illness unable to get the help they really need. However, what I’m interested in are the other colours on the spectrum which do not require therapy, but education and good information on how they can take care of their own wellbeing.

I see so many young people who feel they have no control over their lives and when things go wrong they have no trust in themselves to be able to resolve things. By giving them information on how their minds work so that they understand themselves better can be massively reassuring. It puts the power back in their hands and gives them the confidence to trust that they can deal with the tough stuff. If we can put our time and energy into this area, I believe this can save many young people from hitting the red zone. Promoting positive wellbeing is not rocket science, which is why we need to trust young people with this information and empower them to take care of their own wellbeing.