Top tips for providing teen mental health support in difficult times
Mental health
28 February 2022
By Louisa
Author, health and wellbeing consultant and award-winning GP, Dr. Dominique Thompson. Dr. Dom is a leading expert on teenage mental health and has worked with schools, colleges and universities in the UK and abroad. She is a clinical advisor to NICE, the Royal College of GPs and Student Minds. She is also the author of ‘How to Grow a Grown Up’ and several titles for students.
Dr. Dom joined us as a guest speaker to talk about teenage mental health, informed by her experiences as a GP. She shared her knowledge of what is happening in teen mental health today, why it’s happening and what we can all do to help.
Watch the webinar on-demand
The rise of perfectionism
Dr. Dom explored why this generation of young people seems to be struggling more than others. One of the most significant changes for this generation, she found, is that the level of perfectionism has risen hugely over the last 30 years. This is a significant contributing factor to young people’s mental health. This type of perfectionism is particularly self-critical, with the majority of teens worrying deeply about what others think of them.
Perfectionistic traits are strongly linked to many teenage mental health conditions: anxiety, OCD, eating issues, self-harm, depression as well as to suicidal thinking and behaviours. The more perfectionistic we are in society, the more likely we are to see these sorts of problems. By building this picture, Dr. Dom started to see that the younger generation are living in a very different culture to that of 20 years ago, magnified by the social media era. Although social media is not the cause, it can heighten things like competition, comparisons and perfectionism.
If there is one thing you can do, whether you are teachers, parents, counsellors or mental health workers, is to tell the young people in your care, early on and regularly, that there is nothing that they could tell you or do that you wouldn’t want to hear about and help them with. Even if you don’t have the answer, you can help them to find someone who has.
Teenage mental health support: How should we respond?
It is so important to build a relationship of trust with the young people you are working with. Dr. Dom outlined her top four protective things you can do when teens show signs that they are struggling with their mental health:
- Help them to build a social network – Humans need other humans. Encourage them to make connections, meet new friends, talk to their family and other people they trust.
- Help them try new things – The more perfectionistic the young person is, the less likely they are to try something new because they might fail. Talk about how things can go wrong but that it’s ok.
- Help them find a daily purpose – Young people often feel like they have to know what they want to do with their life, and get very down if they haven’t figured it out. A small daily purpose will help them feel like they’ve achieved something and build their confidence and wellbeing.
- The final secret ingredient is SLEEP – Sleep helps young people in so many ways: physical wellbeing, mood, memory, metabolism, academic achievement. It’s like a superpower and it’s so important. Whenever we can, we should encourage them to get the sleep they need and have good quality sleep. It will be transformative.
Dr. Dom’s general tips
How to respond when teens show signs of behaviours that are worrying, (such as anxiety, depression, eating issues or self harm):
- Stay calm when they tell you difficult things
- Reassure them that academic work isn’t everything
- Don’t assume that they will tell their parents if they feel low
- Help them to feel that you always want to support them, no matter the issue
- Validate them and reassure them that they matter
- Listen, believe them and give them hope
Despite the challenges that remain, the Department for Education’s State of the Nation report shows that children and young people’s wellbeing is gradually improving. This is, in part, due to the incredible work done by almost 400 MHSTs that have been made accessible to millions of school and college pupils in recent years.
Useful resources
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