Mental Health Awareness Week 2023

As we celebrate Mental Health Awareness Week, it is important to talk about one of the most common mental health disorders – anxiety.

Anxiety is a normal emotion in us all, but sometimes it can get out of control and become a mental health problem. Anxiety is characterised by an excessive and persistent feeling of apprehension and worry. It’s usually accompanied by physical symptoms such as sweating, palpitations, and shortness of breath.

It is estimated that over 275 million people worldwide suffer from anxiety disorders, making it one of the leading causes of disability globally.

Lots of things can lead to feelings of anxiety, including:

We can also get anxious when it comes to things to do with money and not being able to meet our basic needs, like heating our home or buying food.

Click here to find tips on how to cope with feelings of anxiety.

Young people, children and anxiety 

Here are some useful guides and resources that may be helpful if you’re a young person, or know young people or children, who struggle with anxiety. Especially during this time of year when exams are taking place.

Kooth is an online mental health and wellbeing service for children and young people.  

Here are some things to remember about Kooth: 

What you’ll find on Kooth includes: 

To stay up to date with Kooth and find helpful information and tips,  you can follow them on their Instagram here @kooth_uk

How to join Kooth:

Whatever you’re going through, you don’t have to face it alone.  You can sign up for free today and talk to Kooth about anything, anonymously go.kooth.com/xgKD

Place2Be have created some tip sheets full of practical advice to help young people, schools and families manage stress during exam season.

Parents/carers supporting young people and children

SilverCloud – aged 16 years+ Online programmes to help ease your levels of stress, sleep better or build resilience. You can choose to use any of the programmes. They are self-help, confidential and secure.

Two new free programmes are available for parents and carers.

You can find out more about these programmes here

You can sign up to SilverCloud here: https://gm.silvercloudhealth.com/signup/

These resources provide guidance and information that have all been quality assured by a Clinical Psychologist. There are resources for young children, teens and parents and carers. There are also resources for OCD and ADHD. You can access all the resources here

Support for Adults

A ‘one-stop shop’ for services that people can self-refer to. It includes a range of information for adults;

This Mental Health Awareness Week Better Health Every Mind Matters will be helping you recognise symptoms of anxiety and motivating you to get physically active to help reduce these symptoms.

https://www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters

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