Parents Mental Health Day January 27th With YoungMinds

Parents Mental Health Day this year will be on January 27th but what is it?

The theme this year for Stem4’s Parent Mental Health Day is #BuildFamilyResilience, focusing on how parents and carers can successfully adapt to challenging life situations, and deal with their own mental health, while navigating their family through difficult times.

Nowadays, the number of children and young people suffering from mental health issues is rising. A contributing factor is perhaps the way that society has changed over the years, especially with the accelerated role that social media plays in our lives. There is no doubt that social media plays a big part in young people’s lives. But whatever the causes, the topic of children’s mental health is one that parents have to navigate carefully.

My wife and I are parents of 10 year old twin girls. A conversation we often have is how much easier our childhoods were in comparison to todays children. We didn’t have social media or reality shows like there are today. Both of these outlets portray people with a supposedly perfect image. Most of which is completely false. Unfortunately children today are bombarded constantly with all of this. The pressures on them to live up to a totally unattainable life must be enormous. As such, there is no doubt that many children start to lose self-esteem and confidence resulting in mental health issues.

This is where parents or carers have to start to navigate a very complicated and difficult journey in first trying to access what is causing the problem and then trying to put it right for their child. The chances are that parents have never experienced anything like this before so working out how to solve these problems is, to say the least, a mammoth task. Its a difficult journey not only for the child or young person, but also the parent or carer.

Even though your child maybe going through a mental health problem, you as a parent or carer will find this very upsetting. The chances are you will feel it’s your fault. You will be asking the question, what did I do wrong? Should I have done this or that? You will possibly start to question your parenting skills too, but it’s very important the last thing you want to happen is for you as the parent to start to go downhill with your own mental health. You need to develop resilience so you can navigate this very difficult journey that will be full of successes but also setbacks.

Thankfully Parents Mental Health Day is about raising awareness, but it’s also about making parents and carers aware that they can reach out for help too. Thankfully there is help out there and one particular organisation that can help parents or carers of children with mental health problems is YoungMinds. Their focus is to help people never feel they are alone when it comes to mental health and they also aim to help parents and carers for children with mental health issues.

I have teamed up with YoungMinds this Parents Mental Health Day to talk about how you as a parent or carer can gain access to help and support if your child is suffering from mental health issues.

YoungMinds provide a variety of support for parents and carers. This is alongside the dedicated “I am a parent” section which can be found on their website.

In the ‘I am a parent‘ section you will find advice, resources and articles written by parents. YoungMinds also provides a helpline, email and web chat service for parents and carers who may be worried and concerned about a child or a young person’s mental health who are in their care. This service is available for any parent/carer who is concerned about a young person up to the age of 25

What can the YoungMinds Parents Helpline support you with?

YoungMinds Parents Helpline is intended as a service to parents or carers to provide detailed, practical advice, emotional support and signposting which will helps parents and carers to support a young person who is struggling with their mental health.

It is very important to mention that the helpline cannot provide advice on medication, counselling or therapy or diagnose mental health conditions. This is something that you will need to see the appropriate health professional for.

What happens when I contact the helpline?

When you contact the helpline, initially you will speak with a trained advisor. They will listen and talk you through your concerns and worries. This is always done in complete confidence.

The advisor you speak too will help you understand yours child’s behaviour and then endeavour to give you practical advice and what your next steps should be.

If, after this initial call you need further help, the advisor will be able to arrange for one of their independent, experienced professionals to call you for a 50 minute telephone consultation which will happen within 7 days.

How Can I access the helpline?

You can call YoungMinds Parents Helpline on 0808 802 5544 Monday – Friday 9.30am- 4.00pm. It is available in England, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland. Parents Helpline is also available on webchat and email chat option.

YoungMinds are very aware that supporting a child or young person with their mental health is not always an easy journey and this is quite often a consequence of not knowing what steps you can take to help the child or young person. YoungMinds believe that by providing this service they can support parents and carers to help enhance their resilience, improve their mental health and generally cope with very difficult family circumstances. Last year YoungMinds responded to 14,047 calls, webchats and email enquiries which just goes to show the need for such an important helpline for parents or carers that YoungMinds are offering.

For more information which can be found on YoungMinds website just click Parents Helpline and Webchat to access help and advice.

As I have already mentioned on 27th January it’s Parents Mental Health Day and I cannot stress how important it is to recognise that a child or young person in your care that is suffering with mental health issues, can possibly have an effect on your own mental health. Let’s be honest, it’s tough dealing with somebody else’s mental health issues and especially tough when it’s a very loved family member.

If you are struggling with dealing with the issues that arise from a child or young persons mental health issues, it’s very important to reach out for help and advice to help you build resilience and find constructive ways to help and also making sure you have the tools to look after your own well-being and mental health. This is why the YoungMinds Parent Helpline is such an important service and resource for any parents or carers not coping.

This is a paid collaboration with YoungMinds.