Session 7: Identifying sources of support

A great source of distress for young people who experience mental health problems are feelings of isolation. You will recall in Session 6 that the parents of the young people who were experiencing mental health problems reported that they also withdrew from families and friends. Isolation is often compounded by a sense of stigma. Support networks can be invaluable in assisting young people and their families. It can help them to manage any stigma they may feel in relation to their mental health and help them to feel connected with others who understand the challenges. It can also help them find sources of support. Internet technology has made it possible for people to link with others in the privacy of their homes, and the opportunities to do this continue to develop and have showed some positive results. This has been particularly the case during the COVID-19 pandemic when options to meet in person were limited. In the next video, you’ll see counsellor John Goss talking about the various types of support that in their experience young people have access to. Watch now to get a sense of the range of support.

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Transcript: Video 1: John Goss: Various types of support

John Goss

There’s various approaches that someone could take to get support for their mental health. For example, they might like to talk to their GP, who then might be able to signpost them to particular support groups or potentially counseling and some sort of talking therapy. Support groups could be really beneficial for someone who would like to share their experience and feel that they’re in an experience with someone that has been through something quite similar.

So the benefit of a support group can be quite empowering in the sense that those people in the group have also been through a similar experience. And the idea would be to share your experience and also hear other people’s experience. That can be very powerful for some people, making them feel less isolated. But they’re not the only person in that sort of situation.

The other possibility is a talking therapy with a counselor. If an adolescent decided to seek counseling, they can expect to be paired with someone, generally on a one-to-one basis, who will be there to listen to them. This will be a space for them to talk about their fears, perhaps their anxieties, or their concerns. That in itself can be incredibly powerful. And the counselor’s role, then, is to listen to that person, to help understand that person, and for that person to understand themselves as well.

So the counselor may do that by asking things like open questions, like, how are they feeling. They may also help set a direction for them and give them some things to think about using reflection. So they may, for example, reassure them to some degree that what they’re going through now has an end goal to it. They may give them tasks to do in between. So that could be things like building confidence, making friendships, and other particular challenges. The real thing about counseling is that that person can expect to be listened to in a non-judgmental way that will feel incredibly powerful to them.

Let’s look at depression, for example. If someone comes to counseling with depression, having that safe space and confidential space to explore what’s going on for them can be incredibly powerful. If you’re particularly concerned about your child, a good starting point might be someone that knows them already. So that could be someone at the school, in particular a teacher or someone they get on well with at school. Or you may choose to go to your GP, as well, who may then be able to refer them to a talking therapy. If you’ve spoken to them already and they also feel that they would like help or some sort of support, then maybe it’ll be more appropriate to approach a counselor in that instance.

End transcript: Video 1: John Goss: Various types of support

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Video 1: John Goss: Various types of support

In the video, John talks about the GP and talking therapy with a counsellor, as being two of the main formal support systems that a young person can access. You will learn more about these types of support in this session. However, as John pointed out, it is also important to sometimes engage directly with the young person and/or the people around them to find out what types of things could best support them.

In this session, you will begin by exploring how a secure network of family and friends can help to support a young person. At the beginning of the video, John also talked about the power of support groups in relation to providing spaces for the young person to share their experiences. Some of these can be in person, but as you will discover nowadays many are held online or via social media. When well-managed, these can be a good source of support and this session contains some valuable information on how young people can be encouraged and supported to use social media for the benefit of their mental health. We will also explore how it can impact negatively and how this can be managed. You will then consider what the charities MIND and YoungMinds can offer to young people with mental health problems.

Addressing mental health issues is far from a passive process on the part of the young person concerned. Professional support strategies rely on the young person being able to engage actively in the process, as so much of it is about developing relationships with the self and others. As you will see in the case of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which you will look at in Session 8, young people can improve their mental health by challenging and adjusting the ways they think about events and their emotional responses to their experiences.

Dr Ken Ginsberg, specialist in adolescent medicine, advocates supporting young people to develop the skills they need to develop competence in life. You heard him in Session 5 talking about the ‘Seven Cs of Resilience’. You’ll hear more from him in the next activity.

Activity 1: Nurturing and supporting in adolescence

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

In Session 5 you were introduced to the Seven Cs of Resilience, by Dr. Ken Ginsburg. In the video it was clear that resilience is not one clear definable thing but something that is more complex and influenced by a range of factors, both internal and external to the young person. The topic of Session 7 is about identifying sources of support, so this time we want you to watch the video again, this time focusing this time on ways in which those around the young person can contribute to their resilience.

Complete the table below as you listen to the video again, this time making a note of all the things that those around a young person can help to support a young person’s sense of resilience.

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Transcript: Video 2 (repeated from Session 5): The Seven Cs of Resilience: Dr. Ken Ginsburg introduces his Seven Cs of Resilience: Confidence, Competence, Connection, Character, Contribution, Coping, and Control. Content provided courtesy of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. © 2018 The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

[BIRDS CHIRPING]

KENNETH GINSBURG

Competence is about the ability to handle situations effectively. It’s not something that is this vague can-do spirit. It’s actually rooted in reality and experience.

It’s about having the skills. And we can build those skills in our children. First, it’s about noticing and building on the skills that they already have. But it’s also understanding that they haven’t yet had the life experiences or the opportunities to develop other skills. And that we can prepare them for life when we help them to build those skills.

So what do they look like? Organizational skills. If you don’t have organisational skills, you’re not going to succeed academically now or in the workplace in the future. Communication skills. If you don’t have communication skills, you’re not going to find your spouse ultimately. And you’re not going be able to get a job.

You have to be able to say to someone, I’m the right person for the job. Self-advocacy skills. Skills to be able to stand up and do what you know is right, even if the people around you are telling you otherwise.

Which brings me to peer negotiation skills. We worry about peer pressure. We don’t need to, not if we prepare our kids to know how to recognise and respond to peer pressure.

Just as important as our building our kids skills is us not tearing down the skills and competencies they already have. Too often adults treat young people as if they’re incapable. In a top-down fashion, we correct them, we overprotect them, and we tell them what to do.

A classic example is the way we lecture kids. We understand the consequences that might happen from a given action. And what do we do? We tell them in rapid-fire. And we tell them all the things that can go wrong. And then end with some dire consequence.

They can’t hear us. It’s not the way their brains think. So they get that we don’t think they’re capable. They get that we’re angry and frightened. But they don’t know why.

When we learn to talk to kids differently and honor the intelligence that they do have, by breaking subjects down so that they can figure things out one step at a time, another step, another step so that they get it, got it, own it, then we honor the intelligence that they have. And they feel capable and they feel competent.

When you’re thinking about competence in your kids, so often, we forget how to prepare our kids. Preparation is protection. Hovering and over-protection is not a way to build your child’s competency.

Think about what message over protection sends. When you step into often and you say things like let me help with that, what’s the message? The message is I don’t think you’re capable of doing this on your own. It’s not a good way to build our kids competencies.

So think about this. Do you let your child make her own mistakes or develop the skills to right herself? Do you try to protect her from every fall or help her understand that falling down is the only way you learn how to get up stronger? Truly, fear of failure is the greatest way to stem competence building.

What you want is for your child to understand where they excel. You want them to find their islands of competencies. I call these spikes. Ultimately, when we’re successful, it’s going to be because we figured out how to contribute to the world. What is our spike? What are we great at?

The only way we’re going to figure that out is to know where you’re not great at. And that’s going to be a lot of trial and error to get there. So, literally, we have to learn to celebrate our children’s unevenness so that their spikes show.

And you have to ask yourself, are you scared of failure? Do you model for your child that when you fall down, you get up stronger? Does your child know that you’re uneven?

Every one of your kids is different. Every one of them is developing a different skill set. Every one of them has the opportunity to sharpen their unique spike. And what happens so often when we’re incredibly well-meaning is to compare one child to the other. And when we do that, we undermine kids’ ability to feel good about themselves.

Another way of understanding the importance of unevenness and actually why we should celebrate unevenness and why it leads ultimately to success for our adolescents is to actually look within their brains and understand what’s happening. There’s a process called pruning that’s happening. So what happens is during adolescence, it’s not that you grow extra brain cells.

What happens during adolescence is that your brain cells become more efficient. They become more efficient in two ways. One is the body lays down what’s called myelin, it’s called myelination. And what this is insulation in the brain that makes all the signals travel more efficiently and faster.

The other thing that’s happening is brain cells are connecting with each other and forming these very important connections. And the brain cells that don’t need to be a part of that connection get cut away. That’s called pruning.

Adolescent development is about pruning. It is about taking away that which you don’t need precisely so that which is your strongest self rises. So when your child during adolescence is beginning to cut away certain activities so they can concentrate on something else.

So when your child is beginning to realise that they’re not as good at one subject and want to devote more time to another subject, don’t think of that as quitting, don’t think of that as failure. Think of that as pruning. Pruning to develop the strongest shoots.

And it mimics or copies exactly what is happening in the adolescent brain. You know it’s competencies that build confidence and that ultimately develop in us the skill sets that are going to allow us to flourish in great times and to withstand the challenging times.

End transcript: Video 2 (repeated from Session 5): The Seven Cs of Resilience: Dr. Ken Ginsburg introduces his Seven Cs of Resilience: Confidence, Competence, Connection, Character, Contribution, Coping, and Control. Content provided courtesy of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. © 2018 The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

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Video 2 (repeated from Session 5): The Seven Cs of Resilience: Dr. Ken Ginsburg introduces his Seven Cs of Resilience: Confidence, Competence, Connection, Character, Contribution, Coping, and Control. Content provided courtesy of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. © 2018 The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

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Table 1: Seven Cs of Resilience

1. Confidence	To use this interactive functionality a free OU account is required. Sign in or register.
2. Competence	To use this interactive functionality a free OU account is required. Sign in or register.
3. Connection	To use this interactive functionality a free OU account is required. Sign in or register.
4. Character	To use this interactive functionality a free OU account is required. Sign in or register.
5. Contribution	To use this interactive functionality a free OU account is required. Sign in or register.
6. Coping	To use this interactive functionality a free OU account is required. Sign in or register.
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Discussion

Table 1 (completed): Seven Cs of Resilience

1. Confidence	Those around a young person can help by building their self esteem. While also ensuring not to overly place pressure on them to perform.
2. Competence	Those around the young person can notice what skills they have and comment positively on those already in place and further influence the development of new skills.
3. Connection	Having circles of adults who ‘see’ them, and who are reliable can help young people connect. It also gives them security to meet challenges that arise.
4. Character	Those around the young person can help to provide boundaries for them and connections with family.
5. Contribution	Helping young people know that they matter but also knowing that they can reach out to others for a helping hand is a clear part of contribution. But it’s important to know that this is done ‘in kind’ and that there is no pity that comes with it.
7. Coping	Telling young people what not to do by shaming them doesn’t work, so those around the young person need to work with them to help them learn better ways to cope by modelling this behaviour.
8. Control	Young people begin to have a sense of control within their homes and watch how those around us teach us be in the world. Those around them can also teach them responsibility.

The value of a supportive social and family network should not be underestimated. In Session 5, you found that having a supportive social network is a key feature of resilience. A strong social network also instils a sense of belonging, which can promote wellbeing. Psychologist Nathaniel Lambert and colleagues (Lambert et al., 2013, p.1425) identified that ‘Having a sense of belonging is to have a relationship with people, or a group of people, that brings about a secure feeling of fitting in.’ Therefore, when considering a person’s social network it will also be useful to think about the quality of the relationships.

Research has shown that parents, best friends, peers, relatives, siblings, teachers and other practitioners and members of the community can all be a source of secure relationships for a young person (Buckley et al., 2012). Look at the diagram in Activity 2, which gives an illustration of a close social network for a young person.

Working out who is part of a young person’s social network can be a first step towards helping the young person to access support from trusted sources. The next activity will help you to map out the social network of a young person you know, and invite you to do the same for yourself.

Activity 2: Social support networks

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Spend a few minutes thinking about the people in the life of a young person you know well. It could be a family member, friend, neighbour, or someone you know from education or sports activities. It might be a young person you know about through another adult.

Fill in the social network for this young person the best you can. Then, consider which of these relationships might be the strongest for providing a sense of belonging or trust. You might find it helpful to think back to Ken Ginsberg’s advice about how to support an adolescent with their competence in organisational, communication, self-advocacy skills, and to understand how to handle peer pressure.

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Interactive Figure 1: Mind mapping

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An interactive clickable figure. One circle in the centre, labelled young person. Then clockwise, the following labels coming from the centre: parent/carer, friend 1, friend 2, sport coach, family member and teacher.

Interactive Figure 1: Mind mapping

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Why not do the same for yourself? Being in a position to support others means that you also need a good social network for your own wellbeing. Consider who might be able to provide good quality support to you. It may be that there are a few individuals who provide slightly different aspects of the support you need.

Discussion

There are no right and wrong answers to this activity as each individual’s personal circumstances are different. It is likely that some of the relationships you have identified include people the young person knows really well and may be emotionally close to, such as family members or friends, while other relationships, though important, are with people whom they are not emotionally close to, such as fellow students, members of a social group or team members. It is important to note that emotional closeness in relationships of course depends upon the quality of the relationship they share with network members. What the activity highlights is that each person is part of a network of relationships of different kinds and varying degrees of importance.

Note that networks may change over time; they grow, shrink and shift. As a person moves through adolescence, their peers may become more important than their close relatives. School transitions and changing family dynamics can be disruptive and adapting to these changes should be seen as a natural part of development.

In Activities 1 and 2 of this session you have seen how social networks can nurture and strengthen a young person’s emotional health. Research has shown that participating in school-based extra-curricular activities can help to reinforce existing friendships and help new friendships to form (Schaefer et al., 2011). However, it is also important to note that socialising may be a trigger for some young people who feel socially anxious and/or depressed (Martin and Atkinson, 2020). ‘Withdrawal’ from social networks and family can characterise many mental health issues and exacerbates feelings of social isolation, and can also heighten stigma. Therefore, in thinking about a young person’s social network and the influence it has on a young person’s wellbeing, you might consider whether you can suggest ways it can be strengthened or supported. You may also wish to include reviewing any disruptive influences that you think there may be on the young person or improving your confidence in responding to distress. We turn to ways to do this in the next section.

Is it also important to note that a young person may not always want to confide in close family or friends, especially if they are concerned about stigma or worried that they will upset the relationship. It is important to understand barriers to accessing support and this is something we explore in the next activity.

Activity 3: Barriers to accessing informal social support

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Listen to the young men we interviewed discuss how they perceive their friends might feel about reaching out for support in relation to mental health. Pay particular attention to any tensions they report in relation to how mental health is thought about by them and their peers.

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Transcript: Video 3: Barriers to support

SPEAKER 1

But, yeah, I would say I have a lot of friends that would not say anything. They’d be too embarrassed. They think it ruins their--

SPEAKER 2

Most of them have bravado.

SPEAKER 1

Yeah, exactly. And-- so, yeah, because they’d be embarrassed if I-- because people would talk about-- I never talked about that thing.

SPEAKER 2

I’ve definitely got friends that would-- yeah.

SPEAKER 1

People don’t want to talk mental health issues.

SPEAKER 2

Yeah, would never, even if they were feeling really shit about themselves, would never dream of actually saying something about it, which is a shame, really. But--

SPEAKER 1

Yeah, some people just need to find that one person that they could speak to about it.

SPEAKER 2

I think it-- even in the last 12 to 18 months, it has started getting better. Because awareness around men’s mental health is becoming quite popular in mainstream media. And I think a shift is beginning. And it is going in the right direction. But it is definitely still a bit of an issue.

SPEAKER 1

I don’t know, though. I feel like the whole talk about it almost creates a bigger stigma.

SPEAKER 3

Yeah, I think so as well.

SPEAKER 1

I don’t know. The fact that everyone has been like, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about it. Yeah, that’s good. And I understand why you’re saying that. But it also-- I feel like it would make it more almost embarrassing to have mental health issues.

Because now everyone knows what they are. And it’s understood people would perceive you worse. Not worse, but as in, if you compare to how I would perceive someone before, I wouldn’t really think much of it. Because I didn’t know much about it. But now because that’s spoke about so much, I would think more of it.

End transcript: Video 3: Barriers to support

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Video 3: Barriers to support

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Answer

They start by talking about how some of the young men they know would be embarrassed to talk about their mental health because of the need to keep up a bravado. They also discussed the importance of mental health campaigns that help to reduce stigma. However, this was a source of disagreement among the young men as they reported varied opinions about whether this awareness can also create additional embarrassment. This disagreement is a further example of how individuals react and perceive information on mental health differently. Furthermore, it shows the importance of not making assumptions about how young people react to these campaigns.

As the clip you just listened to highlights, there is still a great deal of work to be done to get young men to open up about their emotions. Embarrassment seems to be a key barrier to talking about mental health, but there are things that we can do to support young people to enable them to discuss these issues.

Although a personal network is essential in many ways to support wellbeing and/or recovery from a mental health problem, it is important to acknowledge that supporting someone with mental health issues can be a challenge to us. This is something you’ll explore in the next section.

When a parent or carer is supporting a young person who has confided in them about issues with their mental health and emotional difficulties it can feel overwhelming.

Figure 2: #be kind

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Figure 2: #be kind

Research shows us that self-care and a network of support for carers is vital in ensuring that when parents, caregivers and educators feel out of their depth, they have support for themselves. However, not everyone knows how to respond when they are told about mental health issues.

Activity 4: Experiencing different supportive responses

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Listen to this audio from one of the parents we interviewed as she talks about how people reacted when she shared the news that her daughter was experiencing mental health issues. Note the positive and negative aspects and reflect upon how this might impact your behaviour in future if you were told that a friend or colleague was supporting someone with mental health issues.

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Transcript: Audio 1: Support for parents

SPEAKER

I had one friend who, when she found out, sent me a text that sort of said, "I’m here for you night and day." And I’ve never forgotten that, and I will never ever. I will always be grateful.

And other friends as well-- a colleague particularly at work rang me every single week, and her opening words were, "How is she?" And I will never, ever forget that either. And if there’s any way I can repay people-- but you find people do react differently. Another very good friend of mine said, "Well, I daren’t tell my husband, because he’ll just laugh at something like that." People don’t see it, I think, as an illness.

If you can bring yourself to be open about it, the support and directions you can get from other people probably were of the greatest help. Some way down the line, I just crumbled. Maybe I’d internalised it all, and it was time to get it back out, get rid of the-- try to come to terms with the feeling of guilt that I had failed as a parent in the very early stages of what she was going through.

End transcript: Audio 1: Support for parents

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Audio 1: Support for parents

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Answer

This parent describes how regular contact and offers of support were vital to her. However, she also experienced unhelpful responses which dismissed the seriousness of what her daughter was experiencing. Overall, background support and direction were of the greatest help to her.

Being exposed to the various responses different individuals may express in response to disclosures about mental health can be challenging. However, often at least part of the problem is that often there is a lack of understanding about mental health distress. You may even find that as a parent, caregiver or educator you are taken out of your comfort zone and challenged beyond your own limits of understanding about these issues. This is why education about mental health distress and how to manage it is so important.

In response to these challenges and in an attempt to improve support and reduce stigma, bespoke training courses have been set up for those who wish to find out more about how they can support and help young people. For example, the training company Mind Matters have developed an adapted version of the popular Mental Health First Aid course to ensure the content is more specific to young persons’ mental health.

Other examples include that offered by Papyrus, a charitable organisation working to prevent young suicide which offers three different types of training for schools and colleges ranging from short courses that can be completed in an afternoon that give a brief overview of the main topics, to more intensive two day courses that build up skills.

While these courses are more formal and therefore have costs associated with them, there are also many other free courses on OpenLearn and FutureLearn that deal with particular areas of concern that you may want to know more about. If you wish to find out more you can simply enter relevant search terms into the search engines both online portals provide.

Some of the parents we spoke to thought it may also be useful for parents and supporters to have counselling themselves. This can provide a safe space to talk over the feelings experienced when supporting someone who has mental health difficulties.

Social media gets a lot of bad press about its negative impact on young people (as well as adults). Research indicates that social media is implicated in increasing adolescent depression (Brunborg and Burdzovic, 2019; Raudsepp, 2019) especially in girls (Kelly et al., 2019). It also provides a platform for narcissistic self-promotion and aggression (Stockdale and Coyne, 2020) and acts as a mediator of body image concerns (Marengo et al., 2018). By contrast, however, there is also evidence that social media can provide a supportive environment for young people to make connections and receive mutual support (Radovic et al., 2017).

Figure 3

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Figure 3

In the UK, it is becoming compulsory to include online safety in school curricula (Department for Education, 2019; Welsh Government, 2019; CCEA, 2020; Scottish Government, 2017). Many young people are well briefed on online safety, although this doesn’t mean, of course, that they will take all the precautions they have been taught. In the next activity, you will find out about how a young person you know engages in social media and the impact this may have on their mental health. In this section, we will explore these issues by listening to audio and watching video from our interviews with young men and women.

Researchers and charities are increasingly working to explore how to guide young people to manage their relationship with social media so that it has more of a beneficial impact on their wellbeing. In the next activity, you will explore some of the simple techniques they have developed.

Activity 6: Controlling a social media feed

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Regardless of your personal opinions of social media and the role it is playing in the lives of the young people you work with, it is important to realise that young people are best supported by helping them to make good personal choices about social media for themselves, especially as many adolescents have individual access to mobile phones and computers. In the previous activity, you heard the young men describe how they limited their use of social media to manage the impact it had on their mental health. Watch Video 6 in which young people describe how they altered their behaviour to have a more positive time when using social media.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 6: #OwnYourFeed for a more positive time online

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Transcript: Video 6: #OwnYourFeed for a more positive time online

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 1

How you experience social media can affect your mood.

SPEAKER 2

If it constantly seeing something makes you angry or stressed.

SPEAKER 3

Jealous.

SPEAKER 4

Or frustrated.

SPEAKER 5

It can build up and start having a negative impact on your life.

SPEAKER 6

But there are things you can do to own your feed and have a more positive time online.

SPEAKER 7

And we’ve got three steps to get you started.

SPEAKER 8

The first step to owning your feed is cleaning your feed.

SPEAKER 9

A good way to clean your feed is ask yourself how each post makes you feel.

SPEAKER 6

Does it make you angry? Maybe you should meet that person for a bit or unfollow.

SPEAKER 7

Does it make you bored? Maybe it’s not worth your time.

SPEAKER 9

Happy or inspired? Keep it coming.

SPEAKER 2

Remember, it’s your feed. It’s up to you who you follow.

SPEAKER 3

The second step to owning your feed is to use social media.

SPEAKER 6

To find like-minded people who share your passions.

SPEAKER 1

No matter what you’re into or what you’re going through, there are people out there that feel the same way that you do.

SPEAKER 7

You’re not weird.

SPEAKER 5

You’re not a freak.

SPEAKER 8

And you’re certainly not alone.

SPEAKER 5

You can use social media to figure out who you are, what makes you tick and get help with the stuff you’re dealing with. The third step to owning your feed is to make sure you’re not just watching, you’re part of it.

SPEAKER 7

And it can make you feel so much better to get involved.

SPEAKER 1

Why not DM someone you haven’t seen for a while and ask how they are?

SPEAKER 8

Or tag a friend in something that makes you smile.

SPEAKER 2

Or just leave a positive comment to cheer somebody up.

SPEAKER 4

You never know it might make a difference to someone to show them that you’re there.

SPEAKER 1

Take these three steps to take control of your feed and have a more positive time online.

SPEAKER 8

Start owning your feed now.

SPEAKER 5

You’ve got this.

SPEAKER 6

Let’s do it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

End transcript: Video 6: #OwnYourFeed for a more positive time online

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Video 6: #OwnYourFeed for a more positive time online

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As you watch make notes summarising the following three key pieces of advice:

• ‘Cleaning your feed’
• ‘Find your crowd’
• ‘Say hey’

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Answer

This video illustrates three simple steps to helping a young person manage their social media and the impact it has on their emotional health. The key here is the message of ‘cleaning your feed’ and at its core is the idea that young people should consider how each post makes them feel and to mute or unfollow those that do not keep them interested or happy. The second step is to use social media to find like-minded people who share their interests. The final step is to use social media to connect with people, to reach out and say hey.

It can be hard to talk to young people about these things in a way that captures their attention, so it may help to ask the young person to watch the video themselves. However, campaigns like this which are driven by and informed by young people are an illustration of how many of them are increasingly aware of the impact of social media on their mental health.

Another way to help young people engage with their own social media use is to access the reminders that tell them how long they’ve been using an app or to set their own limits. For example, on Facebook, go to Your time on Facebook > Set daily reminder. They can then set their own ideal daily usage.

Being able to limit time spent on social media can also help to prevent sleep disruption. There is now a body of research that indicates ‘young people who spend more time using social media (especially at bedtime) and those who feel more emotionally connected to platforms’ report later bedtimes, take longer to get to sleep, sleep less and have poorer sleep quality (Scott et al,. 2019, p. 539). You learned about the link between sleep and adolescent mental health in Session 6. Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate sleep disruption or to use phones to help promote sleep. For example, most phones now have night time modes to ensure that blue lights emission is reduced. In addition, meditation apps have stories that can help young people wind down and get to sleep.

New research can help us to understand the complex ways in which young people engage with the online world as part of their everyday lives. For example, the internet and social media use can serve as a means of self-interpretation, allowing young people to conduct ongoing ‘identity work’. These digital technologies can make it possible for us to create ‘multiple selves’ or ‘multiple identities’ allowing young people to transform themselves. In addition, it can allow young people to connect with other people who are like them.

Activity 7: Understanding the impact of the internet on identity

The young people who are growing up today where born into a world were the internet and social media already existed. In their book on the subject, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser described them as being ‘Born Digital’ and suggested this had a fundamental impact on how their identity was formed. One of the key messages from the book is that it is not always possible for those of us who grew up in a time pre the internet or social media to fully connect with the integrated nature of the digital identities that many young people have these days. But it is important for us to recognise that, as with most things in life, there are both positive and negative consequences.

Watch this video which illustrates well the complex relationship some young people have with social media.

Video 7: Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences (The Open University is not responsible for external content.)

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

As you will see from the word cloud (Figure 4), individual reflections on social media and the ways in which young people use it can vary from our own. From this video and from the extracts of interviews with young men it is clear that we should be careful about buying into the notion that all social media is bad for young people. Instead, we need to move towards an understanding of how and why young people engage with various social media networks.

Figure 4

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An illustration of a word cloud with the following words confusing, complicated, contradictory, conflicted, communication, less lonely, somebody to talk to, wish I could physically hang out instead, distracting, side-tracked, hate speech, racist comments, sexist comments, bullying, rude language, offensive, hurtful, invalidate feelings, cherish connection, artwork, writing platform, discuss issues, passionate, cool, habit, something new, exciting, complex.

Figure 4

What happens if a young person does not feel able to confide in close friends and family? Charities provide a range of important services for supporting mental health in young people. Their websites are often the first place people go for information.

Figure 5

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An illustration of a person in the sea drowning with lots of different words surrounding them, such as ‘tips for living with OCD’, ‘Do you want your life to be happy OR safe?’, ‘talking therapies’, ‘waiting lists’, ‘can virtual reality help’, ‘exercise better than medication?’ ‘pills’, ‘hands in bucket of used tissues for 3 hours’, ‘self help cost effective’, ‘celebs with OCD’, ‘Amazon.co.uk’, and ‘exposure levels too severe’. There are three birds above and two sharks in the water. One shark has the Facebook logo and the other shark has the Google logo.

Figure 5

Charities such as Mind and YoungMinds provide support networks for young people. Mind, for example, has linked up with the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, which has a network of centres across the UK that provide support for young people. Mind, itself, has a network of ‘Local Minds’ based in certain localities, and which are able to provide local support. Similarly, YoungMinds acts as an information hub, bringing together a range of organisations that can help young people.

In this section, you’ll find out about some of the help charities provide directly to young people.

COVID-19 has severely restricted people’s ability to engage in face-to-face support. However, as many young people now commonly use social media platforms to communicate with their peers, it is possible to harness these skills to encourage them to engage with other sources of support. There are now lots of ways for young people to reach out for support using technology. In the next activity, you will consider some of them.

Whatever your attitudes towards online sources of support, it is now hard to ignore the potential value of the peer support and a feeling of connectedness it offers. Given that young people are enthusiastic users of mobile apps, there is growing interest in developing digital methods of connecting young people to sources of help from both peers and professionals (Bohleber et al., 2016). Easton and colleagues (2017) have discussed the distinction between improvements from a medical perspective of mental health in contrast to ‘social connectedness, personal empowerment, and quality of life’. Fortuna and colleagues (2019) see online peer support as potentially complementary to medical interventions.

There is still much to learn about the value of online networks, but it is important to realise the wide variation in the nature of online support and if a young person is finding it helpful, that may be the most important consideration.

One of the most important aspects of online supportive resources is that they are frequently accessible at very short notice and are often accessible 24-hours a day. This can be an important aspect as it allows young people to reach out whenever they are struggling and when they might think it is not appropriate to reach out to more formal sources of support.

Self-help for adolescents can be supported online via websites and mobile apps. Many charities now provide support directly to adolescents via their websites. For example, YoungMinds and Childline provide advice on a range of issues from bullying to explaining mental health conditions, to asking for help.

In the next section you will explore how apps can provide a form of therapeutic support and treatment.

As our understanding of social media has increased, so has the development of apps that help us to monitor and improve our mental health. This area is an ever-expanding part of technology with new apps being developed all the time. These apps cover a range of topics, from those that help to monitor moods swings to those that teach mindfulness-based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

Recently, there has been a move towards apps that have been developed with young people, so that their needs are central to the design and content. Research now suggests there is significant potential to improve the lives of young people who are experiencing depression via technology-based app based interventions. As the area changes so rapidly it is difficult to recommend any that will remain relevant in the future. Here we have listed some of the key ones that you may chose to explore in your own time. There will be others that you come across that you may also find useful.

Figure 6: Different types of mental health apps

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Screenshots of the Combined minds and Hope apps.

Figure 6: Different types of mental health apps

• Hub of hope: An app and online tool to help people with mental health needs to access patient groups, charities and other sources of support across the UK.
• Combined minds: For parents and friends who want to support a young person’s mental health.
• Mental health podcast list

Because apps are constantly changing and the evidence used to develop them is changing, it is hard for us to recommend any for specific use here. However, the NHS has an apps library list aswell as resources here, where they list those that have passed the NHS approval process.

It is also important to remember that for some young people it can provide an alternative form of support, for others it might address their need for support between their face-to-face appointments.

Check what you’ve learned this session by taking the end-of-session quiz.

Session 7 practice quiz 

Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’ve finished.

In this session you have explored how you can go about both support young people yourself and in supportive networks of other adults and peers. You have also examined how you can find sources of help so that they can engage in self-care. You have heard some young people discuss the impact that social media can have on their mental health and how they have found ways to manage this impact. Finally, you have examined range of online support organisations and mental health apps that exist that can provide both information on mental health and direct contact to helping professionals. Well done, you have now almost completed this course and are ready to turn to the final session.

Now to go Session 8.