OUR NEWS
Across the UK, parents and carers are quietly breaking under the weight of a public health crisis they didn’t cause but are forced to carry. With 1 in 4 young people aged 17–25 now facing a probable mental health condition often combined with other challenges including ASC, SEND and other complex needs, families are stepping into roles they were never trained for. Most face years of relentless caregiving without a roadmap, adequate support, or even recognition.
NEW REPORT OUT NOW
Four analogies for parenting mental health. On June 9th, along with 44 intrepid fundraisers, I climbed Mount Snowdon to raise money for Parenting Mental Health (PMH). It was an incredibly challenging walk. The wind blew with 30-mile-an-hour gusts, and the clouds closed in. There were many points when I wondered if I would make it.
When was the last time you told your child they were beautiful, funny, supported, loved?
How many hats do you wear? Parent, child, spouse, friend, employee, employer? Whatever roles you’re responsible for, when your child’s mental health declines, and you’re expected to work as if it hasn’t, it can add an additional layer of stress to an already challenging situation.
Our founder Suzanne reflects on why sometimes, you have to stop fixing and start feeling.
On World Mental Health Day, read today's blog on hope or scroll to the end to listen.
As we drove up the M6 on a bright sunny day in September 2019 to take our daughter to university, I felt a huge sense of achievement - and stomach churning anxiety. Just 4 short years before, Issy had become depressed and suicidal after a period of sustained bullying at school, leading to 2 years out of education and a whole wilderness of pain for her, and for us. But here we were, against the odds, hurtling towards a fresh start with everything from the prerequisite coloured plates (so they don’t get appropriated) to a full body hot water bottle (possibly not so necessary) ready for an experience that I naively hoped would be like a young adult version of Mallory Towers. Connection, challenges, life changing growth. But to consider the university experience for our child to be the deliverer of all the things they may have missed - friendships and relationships, opportunities to work or volunteer, a chance to become independent - can make more of it than is realistic, to them and to us. Removing the expectations of it can be more helpful than we think. University really isn’t like college or school so if your child’s mental health has been poor or challenged their ability to greet the world in positive or purposeful ways, you can naturally worry that they’ll be isolated away from home; they won’t have the support they do from you and others; that this might not be the great adventure we’re all told it is. So how can we approach this in a way that supports them and helps us to come to terms with the enormous challenges your child may have overcome to get there or the very real, very natural fears we hold for them?
If you’re one of the 11million+ adults in the UK alone whose body image has made them anxious, I see you. I hear you. I am you. I vividly recall getting changed after swimming at school aged about 10 and realising that I was about 2 feet taller than everyone else and that I had the beginnings of breasts. As I dried myself, someone pointed at these mounds of flesh and everyone stopped and looked at me as if I’d grown another head before their eyes. And as I looked around at the picture perfect girls before me - small, perfectly formed, and nowhere near puberty - I thought how strange I must be to be different. Not good different then, but sad, bad, differently different. I think that was the day I consciously stopped innately, naturally, loving myself. By rights, I should have been delighted about the burgeoning boobage. My first memory is running down the stairs on my 5th birthday crying to my Mum that they hadn’t come! I thought breasts grew overnight when you were 4 years and 364 days old. These early memories set the scene for me to feel somewhat out of sorts with my body. Always bigger than everyone else, I have fought my beautiful body for decades. If anyone else had size 8 feet in the 1980s, I am sorry for the pathetically small range of Clarks school shoes you also had to choose from. Thankfully times have changed. The fight I have with my body hasn’t developed as rapidly though. It has taken me decades to come to terms with my body: this amazing vessel that has borne 2 beautiful, perfect human beings, that hasn’t ever broken a bone, that survived physical traumas, that continues to function, regenerate, and breathe without my overactive mind telling it to do so. And it’s a work in constant progress and flux.
