As Mental Health Awareness Week draws to a close, Sarah Garner, Associate Director of Delivery, NHS Newham Clinical Commissioning Group, looks back at five days of engagement with young people on the mental health issues that matter most to them.
One in four people experience mental health problems such as anxiety or depression at some point in their lives – and more than half before they turn 15 years old. My colleagues and I at NHS Newham CCG wanted to find an effective way to engage with young people in the borough. We see them as vital to:
- the success of our CCG’s long term health ambitions
- changing the behaviours that lead to poor health outcomes
- improving perceptions of CCGs as organisations adding value to the local health environment.
To help young people to feel more confident in asking for help and publicising local services, NHS Newham CCG developed a series of radio programmes with Reprezent 107.3FM – the only radio station in the UK presented entirely by young people under 25.
Young people, generally, do not engage in traditional communications channels (printed materials) and engagement activities (meetings), so our communications needed to employ channels most relevant to the audience. That’s why we chose radio.
Across five days we covered these themes and topics:
• Anorexia and bulimia – not simply skin deep
• Bullying
• Teenage depression
• Drugs and alcohol
• Depression, young people and the music industry
To make the programmes even more attractive, celebrity interviews were sprinkled through the week, including Rudimental, UK musician and actor Bashy and conscious hip hop rapper Akala.
In addition to their wider youth listenership, the station has approximately 5,500 Twitter followers and they’ve tweeted nearly 31,000 times.
Here’s what young people are saying for themselves about mental health:
From Reprezent:
Mentally ill young Londoners – are we being ignored?
Anxiety
From Good Morning Britain:
One in ten young people experience depression (second clip)
To get London talking, the campaign used the Twitter hashtag #IsItJustMe, the airwaves on 107.3FM, and the reprezent website. Through interacting with young people on the mental health issues affecting their lives, Newham CCG and Reprezent have taken an important first step towards removing the stigma surrounding mental health.