Today is World Mental Health Day with the theme of ‘Young people’s mental health in a changing world’!
Despite hoping that in the future we won’t need a ‘World Mental Health Day’ as there will be parity of esteem between mental and physical health, we want to use today to champion young mental health and the early intervention support and counselling services that we deliver to children and young people in Reading.
In 2017/18 we supported 536 children and young people and delivered over 4,000 counselling sessions! Today we want to thank all of our staff, counsellors, Young Ambassadors, volunteers and supporters who continue to make supporting Reading’s young people possible. To everyone who has fundraised for us over the years; thank you! It is only because of your hard work and dedication that we can continue to make sure that we can be here to support the next generation.
As a society, we need to tackle mental health problems early on in life otherwise, in the words of the Mental Health Foundation ‘we risk failing the next generation right at the start of their lives’. It is already the case that only 1 in 4 young people who are struggling with their mental health get the support that they need and it is exactly for this reason, that we do the work that we do.
To mark ‘World Mental Health Day’ we will be delivering three workshops this week where we champion the experiences of young people and the benefit that the timely support that they got through No5 has had on their lives.
