Since September 2022, we have run a support group for parents of secondary school-age young people struggling with mental health, through fortnightly, in-person group sessions. These parents joined the programme at a point when their young person was facing severe mental health difficulties, with families feeling alone, unsupported, and experiencing lengthy waits for input from mental health services.
This first in-person group has been extremely successful for individuals, their young people and wider families, by providing parents with support, skills, strategies and confidence to play a central role supporting their child’s recovery.
“It has been a lifeline for me at the right time” (Parent, 2022)
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.
Are you a parent or carer living in Devon supporting a young person struggling with mental health? Would you like to join our face-to-face support group? Please get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] or contact us through our website: https://www.youthmentalhealthfoundation.org/contact-us