Improving Mental Health support for Young People in Leeds!

In today’s blog, the four Members of Youth Parliament for Leeds inform you about their current national campaign for better mental health support for young people…

Over the past year, we have been coming up with ways to ensure that young people in Leeds receive the right level of support in schools and other youth settings. In October 2014, 876,488 young people across the UK voted in the UK Youth Parliament ‘Make Your Mark’ ballot (including over 19,000 from Leeds). Improving mental health support was voted as the nation’s top issue in by over 350 Members of Youth Parliament in the Houses of Commons.

As having the right mental health support is such an important issue to young people like us, we believe it’s time that we worked together to ensure that the correct support is available.

As Members of Youth Parliament, representing other young people in our city, we have created a short film to get our message out – to help fight stigma and prejudice and to highlight some of the fantastic services we have here in Leeds to support young people who may be feeling anxious or depressed.

We would really appreciate it if you could find two minutes to watch our short film which can be found at:

https://youtu.be/vTM3O-8z8cA

We would also like to make your school / organisation aware of some of the local services on offer to support young people to be more emotionally healthy. It would be great if all the staff in your organisation could be made aware of the following:

• Mindmate – our new local “one stop” website for children and young people providing direct information and advice on who to speak to when they are feeling depressed. It would be great if all the young people you work with know about this site. We have enclosed a poster to promote it.  https://www.mindmate.org.uk/

• Mental Health First Aid Training for staff – did you know there are local courses available to train your staff in basic ‘mental health first aid’. Often all staff are given basic first aid training so why not have mental health first aid training too?

http://www.commlinks.co.uk/Sites/Training/events/youth-mental-health-first-aid-dec15

The emotional wellbeing and mental health support team in Leeds City Council also has lots of great resources and training to support those who are working with young people.

http://www.schoolwellbeing.co.uk/pages/web-links–2

• Time2Change – are a brilliant local support organisation who run a group ‘Shout Out Leeds’ – a vibrant group of young people aged 16-25 who come together to advise and support on issues to do with mental health for young people

http://www.timetochangeleeds.co.uk/shout-out-leeds-young-people/