Right Here hosts showcase on young people’s mental health
Right Here, the PHF mental health Special Initiative, hosted an event on 4 February showcasing the work of its projects and other organisations in supporting young people’s mental health.
Entitled ‘A Voice and a Choice’, the event was chaired by Gregor Henderson, Wellbeing and Public Mental Health Adviser at the Department of Health. Over one hundred practitioners, charities and young volunteers attended at The Wellcome Collection in London.
The day began with open sessions that set out some of the issues faced by young people with mental health problems. Rosemary Watt-Wyness, from the Princes Trust, shared the findings of the Trust’s Annual Youth Index Survey on what young people thought about their mental health. She revealed that very high numbers of young people are experiencing emotional distress, with more than a quarter (27 per cent)of young people reporting that they feel down or depressed ‘always’ or ‘often’ – a figure that rises to nearly half (48 per cent) of young people not in education, employment or training.
An on-stage interview by three of the young people that have been involved in the Right Here initiative, detailed some of the obstacles young people face in accessing mental health services. These included not being able to book appointments at appropriate times, having to travel long distances to access services, lack of information about mental health support, and the stigma of mental illness.
The showcases consisted of contributions from organisations including The Foyer Federation, Music and Change, The Prince’s Trust, Youth Access and the four Right Here projects, from Brighton and Hove, Fermanagh, Newham and Sheffield.
These were followed by a series of interactive workshops on young people’s involvement in designing services and the most effective approaches to improving young people’s mental health.
The day closed with the announcement of seven organisations awarded funding by the ‘Innovation Labs’ project, which is developing new digital products to support young people’s mental health.
Gregor Henderson, Chair of the event, said that the day was “creative, bold, imaginative and inspiring”.
Right Here, launched in October 2008, is a five-year, £6m initiative jointly managed by the PHF Social Justice programme and the Mental Health Foundation. It was developed to try to tackle the problems of low awareness of mental health issues, and services that are not designed around the needs of young people aged 16-25.
The initiative provides support and information to help young people look after their mental health in locations where young people spend time, and aims to help build young people’s resilience to mental health problems.
