Session 8: Seeking expert support and accessing services

Introduction

Congratulations on reaching the final session of the course! You will have learned a great deal since starting to study this course and you will appreciate how complex mental health issues are, as well as the many challenges involved in supporting a young person. This session goes a little deeper in exploring these many challenges and considers the steps involved in gaining additional help. The session will introduce you to a range of professional interventions that are potentially available should you and the young person decide these might be necessary. It will also explore the referral processes that can help you to gain access to these services. By way of introduction to these topics, listen to the following audio in which a parent explains how they came to view getting help for her daughter.

Download this audio clip.Audio player: Audio 1: Getting help

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Transcript: Audio 1: Getting help

SPEAKER

The change in personality, or the anger, or the withdrawal. And it’s all those things. And I’ve read so much about it now. And the worst thing you can say is, pull yourself together. You can’t pull yourself together. You have an illness that needs treating.

And you need people hopefully, around you, who can support and understand it. And my husband and I can look back still with guilt that we didn’t see it in the very, very early stages. We just thought, oh, she’ll grow out of it, or she’ll stop doing it.

Whereas, I could say to somebody now, that can be the early stages of it. And if you can somehow get a receptive conversation, a two way conversation going, and you can find a means of sorting it at that point, it may prevent it developing into anything that is more difficult to deal with, and has far more serious implications.

The chances are as a parent you’re not blame. So you do blame yourself entirely. But the chances are you probably weren’t. If you can hold on to that, that can help. It’s just something that happens physiologically, or magically to a person. And you probably didn’t cause it. It just is one of those things.

If you can read what you can now find out there, talk about it, you will find people who have been through it themselves, or with somebody else. And you can learn from them, and find the start of the journey that you have to take. And it is a journey. And it’s not a quick fix. It’s a journey. And so you’ve got to stay strong for quite a period of time.

End transcript: Audio 1: Getting help

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Audio 1: Getting help

In this clip, the parent clearly describes how telling someone to ‘pull themselves together’, or thinking that they might grow out of the emotional issues they are experiencing may not always be the case. Parents often blame themselves for how their child is feeling but as this mum describes, it is important that parents recognise that help is available and can make a big difference to how ther child feels. At the heart of seeking help, it can be important to get a receptive conversation going with your young person as this may prevent the issue developing into something that is more difficult to deal with. But as this mum also points out, this is something you may need professional help to do.

In this session, you will begin by exploring the referral routes available to parents and practitioners working with young people. You will then consider different treatments for young people with mental health problems, before learning more about how talking therapies can help with a range of issues. Practitioners draw on a range of different strategies to help a young person, and you’ll learn more about these too.