Zoom Parent Support Group: Children Struggling with Mental Health

Are you a parent or carer living in Torbay supporting a young person aged 8-17 struggling with mental health?

Would you like to join our 18-session support group delivered via Zoom? Please get in touch with us by emailing ParentSupport@YouthMentalHealthFoundation.org or contact us through our website: https://www.youthmentalhealthfoundation.org/contact-us 

From lived experience, we have seen the importance of the parent/carer role in a young person's mental health recovery. It is our assertion that this early intervention program will address early onset mental health problems in young people, resolving the problems or preventing their escalation and reducing the potential for lifelong negative impact.

This program provides:                                                                                                             

1) Psychoeducation & skills training: guiding parents/carers to support the recovery of a young person suffering with their mental health using our evidence-based clinical intervention.

2) Parental self-care: teaching parents how to care for their own mental and emotional health to best support their child.

 3) Navigating statutory support: Coaching parents/carers on how to access the support offered by schools, the NHS and non-statutory organisations.

4) Peer support: “A peer-support model is highly powerful in this area. Lived experience often speaks with more authority to people in crisis (and more generally suffering) than professional input, which can at times feel impersonal, invalidating, conflicted and can even be experienced as harmful in some instances.” - Dr D Starley.

The need:

We are addressing the need for an educational support structure for parents/carers caring for a young person struggling with mental health in order to prevent the risk towards lifelong negative impact. With training and support, there is a key role that parents/carers can play to support a child’s mental health.

The need for support within the family-unit was identified through our founders’ lived experience of guiding their teenage daughter’s recovery from anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders and our programme was developed by them working alongside the YMHF’s leadership team of mental health professionals.

There is currently insufficient statutory and non statutory support for young people’s mental health and a lack of guidance for parents/carers, equipping them to effectively support young people of this age suffering with mental health. This program is intended to address this gap in provision.

In 2022, children in mental health crisis spent more than 900,000 hours in Accident and Emergency units in England. 50% of mental health problems are established by age 14 yet 70% of children and adolescents who experience problems, do not receive appropriate interventions at a sufficiently early age. Young people referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) face extensive waits of many months for help. Families are trying to support their young person in crisis but without guidance or support. Suicide is the main cause of death in young people in the UK.