How can young people take care of their own mental health better?

There is certainly a lot around at the moment about young people's mental health, and much controversy over it. The important thing is surely to focus less on the controversy and more on how to help young people negotiate the future, both in the short and long term. 

Last week, there was a report expressing concern that charities are being asked to take up the slack because of the shortfall of qualified mental health professionals. Anyone who has a teenager or child who is suffering from mental health issues will know that the waiting list for professional help is enormous. And even when you get to the end of it the options can be fairly limited and of varying quality because of the lack of funding put into mental health and mental health research for decades. 

Mental health has consistently lagged behind other health services since way before I was a health journalist back in the 1990s. At least now there is a recognition of the need for support, even if there is disagreement about diagnosis.

A lot of the controversy over the weekend was about 'overdiagnosis' and getting people into work. The media picked up on the former rather than other comments about the need for support. Mental health experts are right to be concerned about how terms like overdiagnosis can feed into traditional ideas that mental health is unimportant, that people should just pull themselves together and that they are effectively just 'making it up'. This is certainly not the case with many of the young people I see.

Mental health is complex and any approaches to helping people can take time - and resources, but more resources will be needed if problems are not caught early. What we need to do is to promote the ways young people can take care of their own mental health better and how we can help them. 

That is where Talk2Nish comes in. We don't see young people as victims. We know they are on the frontline when it comes to mental health, often battling their own issues while supporting their friends. We want to give peer mentors the framework and back-up they need to help others and themselves and, in doing so, we want to educate their whole school about the importance of listening and empathy.

We are not seeking to replace what mental health professionals can offer. The two don't need to cancel each other out just as prevention and treatment need to exist side by side. Charities and professionals can work together. We know the enormous scale of the problem so it makes sense to work together. That does not in any way negate the need for funding for professional help, although we know that training the number of professionals needed will take time.

There is not one opinion or one way of doing things that is right. We need a whole gamut of approaches and ideas, but young people need to be at the very centre. It's their lives and futures after all.

*Picture credit: Tumisu on Pixabay