Being happy, being me
Download (PDF 1.42 MB)Summary of report content
This report is part of a programme of work with young people to help local health and care commissioners understand what will help young people keep emotionally well and cope with difficulties in life. It was funded by Cambridgeshire County Council, Peterborough City Council and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group. They are working together to develop a model of care called i-THRIVE.
To encourage young people to talk more about their experiences, Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Healthwatch
Peterborough designed the Your Mental Wellbeing survey. The survey asks young people about their experiences as well as how they access mental health services.
Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Healthwatch Peterborough staff spoke to 534 young people between the ages of 11 to 20 years. In each school, we were asked to provide the sessions in different ways as each had a specific schedule and a way they felt we could best engage their students. As a result, Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Healthwatch Peterborough developed several ways of delivering sessions to students that included assemblies, lunch time sessions to give information and personal social and health education (PSHE) lessons.
In terms of the main findings of the report: Many young people found words to do with mental health, like thriving and
resilience, difficult to understand; more education is needed to fight stigma around mental health; many young people found it difficult to define what mental health is; Young people generally did not know about mental health services, unless they had used CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services), young people said they needed better access to services; some young people felt that there are a lack of self-referral options, other than going through the GP; more mental health information for parents and teachers may help with a better
understanding of youth mental health.
The findings of the survey can be found in this report and have been used to directly inform the redesign of children and young people’s mental health services and the implementation of the new I THRIVE model.