Why Young Minds? by Jacob Gledhill

Young Minds is a charity that looks to improve the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. As a group, we decided to raise money for Young Minds for many reasons, the first of which I think was relatability - pretty much everyone either knows someone who has suffered/is suffering with mental health problems or is a sufferer themselves, so we know just how much mental health problems can affect someone's life.



Mental health is a very complex area, and the extremely challenging mental health issues that people can find themselves facing can often be very hard to understand for those of us fortunate enough to not have had to face them personally. Fortunately, society's views on mental health seem to be slowly changing from ignorance to acceptance, and recently the Prime Minister herself spoke about a new approach to mental health support (click), but there is still a long way to go.  Therefore, anything that we can do to raise awareness around the issues surrounding mental health can only be a good thing, as the more we are all educated on it the easier it becomes for people to open up about the issues they are facing, which is one of the major steps towards dealing with the issue at hand.



Another reason is that Young Minds works specifically with children and young people. Growing up can be difficult at the best of times, but it must be extremely hard to deal with everything coming your way if you have to do this while suffering with a mental health problem. Also, mental health problems can be particularly hard to spot in children and young people, as any changes noticed by parents, teachers or friends may sometimes be hard to differentiate from the 'expected' changes that happen when you enter your teenage years. It's therefore really important that children and young people (and their families) are given the support they need to help them deal with everything they are facing.

To find out more about Young Minds, visit their website here. To donate, visit our fundraising page here.