Youth Mental Health Day 2021 – How Trauma-Informed practice can help young people to #StrideForward

Today (7th September 2021) is Youth Mental Health Day. Set up in 2020 by Stem4, a charity that supports young people to build positive mental health. This year’s Youth Mental Health Day theme is #StrideForward and focuses on how the past year has impacted young people and how they will stride forward and move towards positive mental health.  

Over the past year and a half, the pandemic has brought distress, trauma and grief to all of us in varying degrees. Even for those who have not experienced direct bereavement or life-changing injury from the virus, the uncertainty, isolation and helplessness of this period are certain to leave a lasting impact on everyone, to say nothing of how this has made it all the worse for those who have.

Young people, specifically, have plenty of their own unique issues that the pandemic have instigated or exacerbated. The already overwhelming pressure of schoolwork and exams being a familiar example that has only been further intensified by the disruption of quarantine. Indeed, leading statistics report that 1 in 6 people aged 5-19 have been diagnosed with a mental disorder at some point.

Social isolation and confinement is challenging and upsetting enough for an adult, but as explored in previous articles, significant adverse life events experienced during early life and adolescence can have a marked detriment on cognitive and emotional development that may go on to cause exponential harm in later life. Much of the difficulty inherent in being able to move forward from this harm involves being able to recognise the exact nature of it, and to respond accordingly.

Our usage of the NMT framework refines our practice through a trauma-informed lens, through which we are able to express with confidence and experience the quantitative impact that traumatic events such as these will have on developing minds. Fortunately, this model also enables us to pinpoint in exactly what ways the harm has manifested, and thus, what model of clinical psychotherapy to prescribe to recover from it in an adequately bespoke manner

This is the same model which we incorporate within our involvement with young people in the care system through our sister company Life Change Care. Though the assessment and therapy techniques that we utilise here are designed to accommodate the high-end need presented by many of the young people in our care, such as those with chronic emotional and behavioural difficulties, they are designed upon foundational principles of development and trauma recovery that can apply to anyone in need of integrative support.

Here at JSA Psychotherapy Limited, we specialise in many different forms of therapy to help support young people and their mental health. If you feel like you need some support with your mental health, or know someone who might, contact us today to see how we can help.