Young people seek mental health support
Between five and 10 teenagers are referred to the Youth Commission’s mental health services every week.
The charity is trying to tackle a rise in anxiety, low mood and behaviour concerns among the island’s young people.
The commission has been assisted over the last three years with a £300,000 grant from the Social Investment Fund and Channel Islands Lottery, which has been used to start a pilot project designed to deliver an early help approach to mental health in secondary schools and increase students’ access to support.
It has received 160 referrals since that started.
As part of the project, three members of staff have gained education mental health practitioner qualifications, enabling them to provide low-intensity interventions to students based on cognitive behavioural therapy. They assist with areas including sleep hygiene, problem-solving and panic cycles.
Commission CEO Louise Leale said UK research suggested that one in six children aged five to 16 were likely to have a mental health problem, with the likelihood of young people having a problem increasing by 50% in the last three years.
‘Those are UK statistics but we know we’re no different in Guernsey, we experience the same issues and we know that, with developments in modern technology, social media and digital media, as well as the impact of Covid, issues have got worse,’ she said.
Sian Jones, education mental health practitioner at the Youth Commission, said there were numerous reasons for the rise in teenagers’ anxiety and low mood, including friendship difficulties and social media pressures.
‘When lockdown happened, young people weren’t able to build the relationships they could have done at that time, and with social media, all of the online platforms and groups, they can just follow them around on their phones now. Sometimes people can be left out of these groups, or a different group can be set up for a different friendship group, and that’s terrible in itself.
‘If we think about how society is being impacted at the moment by everything that’s happening around the world, and then we think about teenagers going through hormones, stresses of exams, friendships, relationships and periods – it’s unbelievable when you think about it.’
She said that, when helping young people, the most useful advice she could pass on was to normalise talking about their mental health, and helping them understand that they were not the only ones going through difficulties.
‘We offer different kinds of interventions, you can taper it so that it’s more individually based, and it offers young people a new way of restructuring and untangling their thoughts.
‘The first step is recognising what their main problem is and working on that, and once they’ve solved that, their other problems can dissolve slightly.’
According to commission statistics, 90% of the 160 young people referred over the course of the pilot project reported overall service satisfaction, while 86% reported feeling listened to and supported.
Mrs Leale said that mental health demands across all services, including Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and schools, were much higher than five or 10 years ago, but hoped that they would plateau with the measures that were now in place thanks to the grant.
‘I don’t think they will ever reduce because of the nature of living in today’s world, but I certainly hope that the interventions prevent problems from escalating and needing more involved services.
‘I want young people to know that they’re not alone, their feelings matter, and that there are organisations like the Youth Commission that can support them.’
