Social, Emotional and Mental Health Wellbeing

Please see the files below for resources to support emotional and mental health.

• Shout is a new service to support people who are struggling with their mental health.  Shout is the UK’s first free 24/7 text service for anyone in crisis anytime, anywhere. It’s a place for people to go if they are struggling to cope and you need immediate help.  Anybody can text Shout to 85258 for support.
• Kooth is a free online service for age 10 and up.   Kooth
• Childline is a free service which is able to support children to deal with a wide range of problems including online safety issues. Children can contact ChildLine 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if they are struggling to deal with a situation and need support. For children uncomfortable with talking to somebody directly there is a one-to-one online chat service.  https://www.childline.org.uk/

Depression isn’t just for adults, and it isn’t just being ‘a bit sad’. We all feel a bit down sometimes, but if these emotions and ‘feeling low’ last a long time or affect your child’s daily life, then they may have depression.

Depression is a common mental health problem that causes people to experience low mood, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or loss of appetite, low energy, and poor concentration.

The triggers for depression are not fully understood however, various contributing factors can lead to it, these can include biological factors (for example, genetics or experience of physical illness or injury) and psychological or social factors (experiences of bereavement, or life-changing events.)

Spotting signs of depression in a child or young adult signs can be tricky to spot as a lot of these can be shrugged off as ‘just being a kid’, the signs are complex and range from;

Anxiety is not just feeling shy, it’s bigger and more complex than that, and it’s also a totally normal feeling of fear or panic. When humans face stressful situations it can trigger our ‘gut feeling’, the in-built body alarm bell we have, which tells us when we don’t feel right about something, and we need to deal with it.

Anxiety can kick start our ‘fight or flight’ response, which make us feel more alert, stops us thinking about other things, and even pumps more blood to our legs to help us run away.

Most of us worry and feel anxious sometimes – about things like exams or tests, but once it’s over we usually calm down and feel better. Anxiety becomes a problem when you’re not in a stressful situation, and you still feel worried or panicky.