[MUSIC PLAYING] Young people are very aware of the stigma that's out there in the community. They see how people around them, their parents, talk about mental health conditions, about people with mental health conditions. They pick up things from media, from TV, from films, from social media. They're very aware of the stigma that exists and that mental health conditions are viewed negatively, and that people with a mental health condition often, unfortunately, are viewed as somehow different in a bad way, less worth than others, that they do suffer negative consequences. My name is Petra Gronholm. I'm a research fellow and an honorary lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King's College London. Young people are disproportionately affected by stigma, so stigma is an issue for help-seeking for everyone. But it seems to be particularly so for young people. In order to describe stigma, we can think about different types of stigma and a common one, and perhaps the one that comes to mind most easily would be what we call public stigma or interpersonal stigma. So that's the stigma that occurs in interactions between people. Mental health stigma is still very present IN today's society. We talk about mental health and how important it is, but essentially, we still got people that are struggling with coming forward to support for mental health because of the stigma. We're often seeing that young people are reluctant to even consider what they're experiencing as a potential mental health concern, simply knowing how negatively mental health is viewed and them not wanting to put themselves into that category. In my experience, I don't see many boys come forward for mental health because of that stigma of, well, if a boy or a young male is reaching out for support, that itself could be a problem because it's seen as a weakness. Another common type of stigma is self stigma or internalised stigma. So this is something you would experience if you yourself have a mental health condition and you are aware of the stigmatising views out there in society, and then you apply those to yourself. So you're thinking, I have a mental health condition, and people with mental health condition aren't as good as other people, and that therefore, I'm not as good as other people. Children can be afraid to be labelled with the same kind of label of a mental health condition because of the way that their friends will look at them, or their peers will treat them, or the teachers-- they might be worried about that. People perhaps just simply don't seek help because they think the consequences of doing so would be even worse than actually getting appropriate support, leading to a situation where young people just simply aren't supported in the right way in relation to their mental health conditions. I mean, to somebody for mental health support as well can be quite a big stigma for some children and young people. And actually, a school nurse, what they can provide you with is that safe space to just talk and get those anxieties and worries and how to manage those feelings as well. And we take quite a holistic approach to school nursing. And we sit down-- and it's very informal-- and we can talk through some of those anxieties and worries with that child or young person or parents, carers, whoever's involved with that child at that time. Our daughter was-- Risky behaviour. Risky behaviours. I think she was coming home late at night. We suspect she maybe mixed with the wrong crowd, that type of thing. And she wasn't tell us where she was. She would be threatening to jump out of the window. We had police come along and do a safe and well. One specific dynamic in relation to young people's help-seeking, in particular, for children and adolescents, is this core involvement of their families within the process of conceptualising what's going on and getting help for it. We blamed ourselves. We thought it was down to us because the parents, we're supposed to look after our children and take care of them. We were further to the darkest as to what to do. Where do we go with this? A young person is very unlikely to seek help on their own, to contact the GP on their own, to bring about concerns and seek help. Normally, what a child would do is talk to their parents and then the parent would support them in getting appropriate care. And if we then introduce this idea of stigma-- not just from the child's point of view, in terms of how much they're willing to share about what they're experiencing, but also the parent's expectations and concerns and anticipations around that-- it could be that a parent is just unwilling to even consider that mental health is a real thing. You're in denial that you don't really-- this is just not my label. I don't want this. You don't want to feel judged because I think that's what it does. You feel judged as soon as you mentioned the word mental health, it's an automatic thing. They judge you to say you're a bad parent or why couldn't you have done this or done that. Could well be that a parent very well recognises that their child is experiencing a problem, but they are worried about what would happen if their child was to receive mental health support, if it became known that there's a mental health type problem. So then, despite the fact that the parents are aware of a problem and would like to help, they might still be hindering that pathway to mental health support specifically, which would perhaps be the most appropriate type of support for that young person. So there could be delays in seeking appropriate support and care from the young person's side and from their family's side. I think that's what made us feel shame for me anyway. Is that when you have your older generation, they talk about their kids have grown up and they've gone to school and they've done well, and they're a lawyer and a doctor and they've gone into grammar school. And for us, that's like, God, what have we done so wrong? So then this idea around if a young person has a mental health condition, these opportunities won't be there in quite the same way would be something that could hold back many families from seeking help for their children. And this reflects one of those prevalent stereotype beliefs around mental health conditions that you're somehow not as good as others that it will have an impact on you in the long term, that you won't have friends, that you won't be loved, you won't find a relationship. You can't go on to have a successful career. So we didn't want to talk about any of this. If it was a discussion that came up, we was just not going to talk about it, because we did feel shame because that's the area that made us feel that. And I suppose it's because they lack the understanding in that education of what mental health really is. So it's very old school. And I think we had a bit of that. People who we spoke to within our community didn't understand enough about the impact that mental health has on a family. Fortunately, what we do know about stigma reduction is that a really key feature for that is to showcase recovery narratives and other stories that counter these stereotype beliefs that we might have, and correct those myths and misconceptions about mental health conditions. So a really important thing for young people and families would be to see the reality of what it would be like to seek support for your mental health conditions. The fact that things could get better, you're likely to get help, you're very likely to recover, your life's not going to go down that dark path that you might be fearful of but rather if you get the right help and support, things are very likely to turn around for you and you can have a very good, happy, long life. Looks really happy. Yeah. And I dug them out, these photos. As parents, we cut a park ourselves and all who we think we are and focus on our children that are suffering from mental illness. It's about just providing the right treatment. And the treatments, people will have their families and loved ones, which they will identify with that. But unless they're getting the treatment, it's like people just deteriorate further. So it's almost people are in a hole. And we recognise that it's about getting them out of the hole. And you can't just drag them out of the hole, it's a little bit by little bit, sometimes a little bit treatment, a little bit treatment. And slowly, you start slowly filling up the hole until the hole is covered and they're out of the hole. So it takes time. But what needs to continue is love and caring and understanding. Empathy, compassion. And gaining the knowledge to manage these things.