The kids are not alright

This has been brewing for a long time.

"More than 400,000 children and young people a month are being treated for mental health problems – the highest number on record – prompting warnings of an unprecedented crisis in the wellbeing of under-18s.” GUARDIAN NEWS | 22nd May 2022

Being a teenager is hard enough. There's hormones, there's family and friendships to navigate, there's the beginnings of love and all of the unravellings that come with that.

Yet being a teenager in the 21st century also brings you a tidal wave of existential crises to not only face up to, but according to the rhetoric of many, to have to "fix".

I often quote the fabulous youth activist Clover Hogan in my teacher trainings on eco-anxiety, using the words she spoke in her TedTalk:

“Young people have not created this reality, we have inherited it. Yet we are told that we are the last generation with the chance to save the fate of humanity.”

What a burden. Is it any surprise that young people's mental health is crashing?

Empowerment is a huge part of this crisis - not in the sense of asking kids to "save the world" but in helping them to better see and understand who is out there working tirelessly to create sustainable futures, and what they can do in their own lives to move on that journey.

When we’re mainly fed news stories of misery, heartbreak and government inaction, it isn’t surprising that young people feel demoralised. And yet I know how strengthened and empowered I feel reading about all of the ‘helpers’ out there doing things differently. Feeding myself these stories on a daily basis - the stories of active hope, of the people and organisations out there shaping a brighter future, that is what drives my energy to take action.

Even more significant in this crisis is the lack of spaces and places for young people to be talking openly about the world around them. The news is an ever-increasing onslaught of horror stories, and school is an ever-tightening grip on conformity and compliance. Teachers often feel nervous about discussing big issues, and the lack of spaces for children to just share thoughts and feelings is part of this crisis, as is the guidance and support to be developing emotional resilience in the first place.

I have been writing about the mental health of young people for a long time now, and helping schools to start to focus on the root causes of mental ill-health, rather than just plaster gaping wounds.

One of the reasons I often refer to myself as the 'inconvenient woman' is because when I go into schools, I don’t come in with a 'quick-fix' to wellbeing, but instead invite teachers simply listen. To to the root causes of these high levels of distress and hear what is there. To be helping children to join the dots on the symptoms of system collapse we're seeing in our societies and to understand what and how they can take action to be making change.

One of the reasons we created the 'Courageous Conversations' training and toolkit at ThoughtBox was to help bridge this gap - to help teachers feel more confident facilitating conversations about big, often tricky issues, and to be giving young people a place to talk.

One of the reasons we designed all of our curricular as discussion based and skills-based was to help bring these conversations into the classroom and strengthen the emotional resilience of young people in the process.

We’ve worked closely with the climate psychology alliance, bringing their training and research alongside cutting edge research into mental health and wellbeing from a rich bank of expertise. The consensus from every angle, from every expert, is that talking is the first and most crucial step to supporting a healthy mind. It’s time to talk people.

“The record high number of children and young people receiving care from the NHS tells us that the crisis in young people’s mental health is a wave that’s breaking now...” GUARDIAN NEWS May 22nd 2022

This tsunami has been building for a long time, but we don’t need to let it drown us - we can instead learn to surf. And that doesn’t just mean giving kids a surfboard, it means teaching them how to surf. Emotional resilience is like a muscle - the more it is strengthened, the stronger it gets. And we can help to develop and strengthen this muscle on a daily basis.

It's #timetotalk.

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Rachel Musson is the Director of Education and a leading expert in the triple-wellbeing framework of resilience.
Get in touch if you’d like support bringing courageous conversations into your school or home. ThoughtBox offers a free Courageous Conversations toolkit to help create the space to talk - plus training opportunities to learn more in this area.