Young Person's Mental Health
Increasing the number of health professionals, and those working within clinical settings, who are confident discussing mental health and resilience with young people (including those self-harming or at-risk of harm).
The challenge
Areas of deprivation have greater need but less access to support.
Young people in areas of deprivation are more likely to need mental healthcare but less likely to access support and to recover following treatment. Additionally, the pandemic resulted in additional barriers to support.
Our clinicians, particularly our paediatricians, found there is a prevailing anxiety by colleagues in acute settings to interact with a young person admitted due to self-injury, with individuals feeling they needed to be ‘more experienced’ or ‘needing to be qualified’.
Whilst there is a growing movement to talk about mental health, fear of stigmas still exists from those living with poor mental health. This is compounded by ongoing trepidation by clinicians, teachers and parents that talking about mental health, particularly self-injury, may worsen the situation.
Evidence strongly suggests otherwise, by having conversations, talking about self-injury, open conversations don’t just not make it worse, but actually improve outcomes.
OUR WORK AND INTERVENTIONS
Training and supporting individuals to support young people.
We want to empower everyone, whether a switchboard operator or experienced consultant, to feel confident in having conversations with young people about mental wellbeing and resilience.
We’ve developed multiple resources and conversation tools which support individuals to have these discussions - more information on this can be found at thelemonadeproject.org.uk.
We also offer training, led by our doctors and resource creators, on the evidence behind the resources and how to use them effectively.
We also are promoting a hospital setting champion movement, to have enthusiastic individuals in A&E and paediatric teams to promote use of the resources and encourage colleagues to have conversations with young people.
Learn more on our Network of Champions page.
THE IMPACT
Increased confidence in professionals; better outcomes for young people
Our work has seen professionals and those working with young people be more confident in having conversations (100% attendees reported increased confidence after attending our workshops) in addition to increased understanding of why young people may use self-injury as a coping mechanism and how they can help mitigate and support a young person through this.
Additionally, we are changing the movement from crisis self-injury management to prevention.
As a result of those we train having more conversations with young people we see increased resilience in cohorts of young people and improved wellbeing outcomes.
“The Lemonade Project has been invaluable in providing tools for staff to use with students, helping us to facilitate useful conversations and activities in both groups and one to one."
-Education worker
Feedback from young people
"When I feel stressed I can better cope and calm myself down!"
“I’ve been able to make my mind up about this and feel more positive about the future”
The Lemonade Project
Click here to access the Lemonade Project's website.