Is your child struggling with their mental health? Are you looking to support your child, but need help and guidance?

Being the parent of a child who is experiencing a mental health crisis is devastating and complex. You are most likely in one of the most painful and difficult periods of your life.

We know how you feel, and want to assure you that you're not alone.

You'll desperately want to do EVERYTHING possible to support your child through this crisis, but there's a strong chance that you are feeling:

• UNPREPARED - with no relevant experience or training
• FROZEN - unsure how to move forward
• DISCONNECTED - from your child who may be unwilling to accept help 
• ANGRY - at how teachers and schools etc have let your child down 
• GUILTY - wondering if you could have prevented this
• FEARFUL - of how this situation could escalate

Most likely, you'll have reached out to your doctor, CAMHS or a healthcare professional to support your child's recovery. You want to help...

Trigger warning: This article discusses eating disorders and mental health in relation to young people. If you are affected by anything in this post, please refer to our free resources listed at the end of this article.

According to a 2023 study, there has been a large rise in eating disorder diagnoses and self-harm episodes amongst teenage girls in the UK in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Pearl Mok from The University of Manchester explains that “the reasons for the increase in eating disorder diagnoses and self-harm episodes amongst teenage girls during the pandemic are likely to be complex and could be due to a mixture of issues such as social isolation, anxiety resulting from changing routines, disruption in education, unhealthy social media influences, and increased clinical awareness.”

As a parent, it can be worrying to think that you may have missed the signs of an eating disorder. It is common for parents not to recognise the signs, especially...

Does this picture illustrate how you feel sometimes? 

When your child is struggling with mental health and self-harm, it can feel overwhelming.

There’s a good chance that your head is full of unanswered questions, anxieties, worries, and ideas about things that you could do that might help your child. The problem is, when your head is swimming with questions and ideas, it’s like trying to juggle twenty balls at the same time.

Not only is this exhausting but it often leaves you frozen, not knowing what to do first.

We're here to support you.

We have helped hundreds of parents and carers to better support a young person struggling with mental health through our free online course 'The Horizon Plan'.

To join our free online course today, follow the link: https://www.youthmentalhealthfoundation.org/onlinecourse

Connecting with a community of like-minded parents in the same situation can allow you to feel less alone. We have an online community of parents/carers who are...

Trigger warning: This article discusses self-harm in relation to young people. If you are affected by anything in this post, please refer to our free resources listed at the end of this article.             

Discovering that your child is self-harming is profoundly shocking and upsetting for every parent. If your child is self-harming, it’s likely in ways that you haven't even noticed.

Self-harming is an epidemic that affects young people across the world: 

• 1-in-6 young people self-harm in the UK
• 1-in-5 teen girls self-harm in the USA
• 1-in-4 teen girls self-harm in the Australia 

Types of self-harm

Most of the coverage of self-harm in the media focuses on cutting, referencing young people with self-inflicted wounds on their arms. But in reality, this is only one form of self-harm, and many other forms are overlooked. 

The following list may help to identify other ways that a young person...

Emily's parents separated when she was 10 years old (not her real name). It really affected her mental health, and she feels that she still carries the scars from that time today. So, I asked her for her thoughts and advice for parents who are going through a separation and how they can protect their own child or teen from the stress and trauma that often comes with this really difficult time.

Did they have a lot of arguments?

I didn’t really know, and if they did, it was when I wasn’t around. But I’m very glad they did it away from me because I hated to see them argue. My advice parents is to keep details especially around the separation private from your child. Unless it is essential to tell them certain things, so they have an understanding of what’s going on. Some things about the separation like why they broke up and how it happened were best kept a secret. Probably because at the time it would have changed my opinion about my parents. Also, some of the...

Reposting of Dad.info's interview with our co-founder Joel Sutton.

When Joel’s daughter Jade walked out of a bathroom with cuts on her arms, his world collapsed beneath him.

However, what grew from the pain was his family’s learning how to support their daughter, which they turned into a foundation helping others.

Jade’s struggle

‘We were seeing lots of ADHD traits in Jade, lack of concentration and finding it difficult in classroom situations,’ explains Joel. ‘One afternoon Jade was lying on our trampoline just sobbing. It was a different cry we had never heard before- a gutteral sobbing. It turned out that at the age of 10 she was having a breakdown. She was saying ‘I’m stupid, I can’t keep going at school.’ The stress of trying to keep up with her friends had broken her.’

A private specialist diagnosed Jade with ADHD, and in a bid to support their daughter, the family moved to Devon for a specialist school....