youngballymun: A lifecycle approach to youth wellbeing and mental health
– by Catherine McGowan, WAF Coordinator, Jigsaw-youngballymun.
When most of us think of mental health our first association can be with mental illness, hospitals, medication and therapy, but mental health is far more than just the absence of mental illness. The WHO defines good mental health as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” It’s a tall order for any community but in essence that is what we in youngballymun are striving for.
In youngballymun when we talk about good mental health and wellbeing and what that means we don’t start that thinking in adulthood or even in adolescence. For us, social and emotional wellbeing, or mental health, you may be surprised to hear starts before a baby is born! And that’s where our Ready Steady Grow Service comes in, working with mothers and partners before the baby is born through the first three years of their babies lives. Infant mental health sounds complicated but in some ways it’s very simple, babies that are well-connected and attached with their mother, their father, are thriving babies and parents who are guided and supported in those earliest days, months and years are satisfied and confident parents able for all the ups and downs that go with being a parent.
Families don’t come in neat little packages. Just because Mum is attending Ready Steady Grow with her new born, that’s not to say she hasn’t a toddler in the wings or a teenager starting in Trinity Comp. youngballymun knows that a vibrant and very young community like Ballymun needs a variety of services for infants, children, young people and families which work together right across the lifecycle.
One thing I have really enjoyed learning from working with Jigsaw is that for young people the answer to mental health problems isn’t just behind the G.P or psychologist’s door but by working with and getting support from their families, friends, neighbors and community volunteers. If a family is going to be there to help their son or daughter when they hit a rough patch in adolescence then they need to be in a community that is working across the lifecycle to support good mental health and wellbeing for everyone – parents and children.
In youngballymun we take a really broad view of mental health – social and emotional wellbeing, self-esteem, self-regulation, limit-setting, making progress at school and enjoying social and recreational activities. As Stuart Shanker said here on his recent visit from Canada, “the best wish a parent can have for their child is for them to be happy” and that’s what it’s all about.
After supporting infant mental health and development in Ready, Steady, Grow we work in our 3, 4, 5 Learning Years service to support quality childcare where children are learning to mix with friends, make mistakes, learn about their world and get ready for the transition into primary school. School is such a big part of every child’s life and the foundations for a teenager to transfer into secondary school are started by making the first step from home to pre school and then into primary school. Our Incredible Years Programme recognizes the potential of the primary school years and works with children, their parents and teachers teaching skills to support positive emotional and behaviour development. These skills impact across the family and the child takes them with them through their educational journey.
As saw in our autumn 2009 newsletter, the Write Minded team is working with schools and community partners to improve literacy and oral language. What has literacy and oral language got to do with mental health you may ask? Mental health and wellbeing includes being able to communicate with people, make sense of relationships and the world and getting on well in school, where reading and writing are key.
During the “It’s Good To Talk Week” Write Minded and Jigsaw combined forces with Bingo for the first year students in Trinity. Students had classes with their religion teachers, Duana and Martina looking at words to describe feelings and emotions which culminated in a giant bingo using the feelings faces for these words. It was a great success and the young people really enjoyed thinking of new and innovate ways to describe feelings – there’s more to feelings than having a wrecked head.
During the same week, we teamed up with The Drop In Well Ballymun Family Resource Centre and the Women’s Resource Centre for a Women Telling Stories workshop. As a follow-on from that both centres have teamed up to run, in partnership with us, Axis, CAFTA and CAN a twelve week ‘Women Telling Stories’ programme, with over fifty participants engaged in courses in creative writing, creative arts and social analysis.
When people ask me what age group I work with I could say teenagers as my direct role is with the youth mental health and wellbeing service Jigsaw-youngballymun (which you can read a lot about in this issue of yblive). However, it is actually much more complex and interesting than that. Jigsaw-youngballymun builds on the work of the other youngballymun services and our partners working with younger age groups and with parents in Ballymun. For a community to have positive mental health and to “be happy” we need to be thinking about every child from before they are born and be with them and their parents on their journey right through as they transition into adulthood.
