In this blog post written for Mental Health Awareness Week, Professor Paul Crawford takes this year's theme of 'loneliness' and applies it to the unique challenges facing our young people today.
Professor Crawford is director of our Centre for Social Futures (SoFU) and has written extensively on mental health and the arts.
Following the onslaught of Covid-19 and the compounding impact of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the mental health of young people in the UK, Europe and across the world, is in jeopardy.
A slew of trauma is affecting this population. Greater numbers of young people are battling anxiety, depression, and other psychological challenges such as loneliness. The Children’s Commissioner reported that in the UK alone, the number of young people with a probable mental health disorder rose to 1 in 6 of those aged 5-19 in 2020 from 1 in 9 in 2017. It also reported a 33% increase in referrals to children’s mental health services in 2019/20 with a 4% increase in those requiring support from the NHS.
There are unprecedented challenges to the psychological health of young people, coming out of the pandemic with its trauma, social disconnection, isolation, and disruptions to educational attainment, to the grim turbulence brought by yet another ‘strongman’ dictator, Vladimir Putin, to our and their world.
More than ever, we need creative approaches to young people’s mental health literacy and responses to life’s real and present challenges. We need to close the gap between what we think of as ‘mental health problems’, that is as illnesses or diseases to be sorted out by trained professionals only, and what I have called ‘creative public health’ (Crawford, 2020).
Creative public health is about the public—and in this case young people—playing an active role in their own mental health and wellbeing and doing so by making fuller use of the social and creative assets around them. After Russia’s ‘war of choice’, we will all have to go to war again, if not in the traditional sense, for young people’s mental health.
In this war, we will need to pay more attention to the ways that the creative arts not only contribute to positive mental health but may also be our best chance to advance understanding of and responses to mental health challenges among young people. In my book, Mental Health Literacy and Young People, I argue that we need to improve upstream knowledge about dealing with life’s challenges to reduce or counter the development of specific mental health disorders downstream when these are already part of the lives of young people. This is key given that 50% of mental disorders begin by age 14 with 75% beginning by age 26. We also need to strengthen young people’s knowledge and agency in gaining their best possible lives downstream, following the onset of mental health disorders.
In our campaign, What’s Up With Everyone?, co-created with the fabulous Aardman Animations (Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run etc.), we worked upstream, helping young people to deal with five key life challenges they identified as impacting on their mental health and wellbeing: perfectionism, loneliness & isolation, competitiveness, independence, and social media.
The campaign introduced each of these themes in an evidence-informed series of five original animations, with accessible information supporting young people to begin reflections or conversations about these with their friends, parents, and teachers, etc. Importantly, the films were co-produced with young people aged 17-24. Young people in this age range are likely in transition to college, university, or the workplace when they face practical, emotional, and social challenges. These animated stories are available on our platform www.whatsupwitheveryone.com (with mental health and help seeking advice) and (for younger audiences) on Aardman’s YouTube Channel alongside Shaun the Sheep and other popular characters.
The resources provide an engaging and popular format to make a difference to the lives of young people. In just the first few months after launch of What’s Up With Everyone? (8 February 2021), we reached over 17 million people! The campaign also attracted the support of prominent celebrities and influencers, such as actor and mental health champion, Stephen Fry, among many others, winning Best Content and Social Media at the prestigious Design Week Awards 2021!
In the war on young people’s loneliness and mental health, we need more of our creative industries, like Aardman, to step forward and sign-up for the battle.
Mental Health Literacy and Young People by Paul Crawford is published by Emerald and is available for pre-order