How can we help young people to talk about their mental health? Listen to what they have to say as See Me launch findings of #FeelsFM campaign

This week See Me Scotland launched the findings of their recent Feels FM campaign. Read below to find out more about what we can learn about mental health through children and young people’s engagement with music and discussions.

Feels FM is the world’s first emoji powered jukebox for mental health, which uses music to make it easier for young people to talk about how they are feeling. Through the campaign See Me engaged with young people across Scotland to get their views about what makes it difficult for them to open up about their mental health.

They’ve captured the findings based on the insights of children and young people in a new report. This include insights into how young people of different ages and stages understand the concept of mental health, as well as the barriers they experience to opening up about how they feel.

Through Feels FM children and young people have clearly highlighted that they want to talk about mental health and that they require help from adults and their peers to to open up in a supported and meaningful way.

Many young people told See Me that they feared not being believed or not being taken seriously by adults and that they worried about “embarrassment, judgement, rejection and isolation or being treated differently or unfairly as a result of opening up.”

Based on young people’s views, See Me have identified the kind of social change needed in order to support and empower children and young people when it comes to speaking about their mental health. The key messages include:

• Developing evidence-based training for parents, carers and professionals
• Engaging young people with lived experience in the development of mental health initiatives and approaches
• The need for a public approach to addressing language and long term negative attitudes to mental health which perpetuate stigma

It’s clear that children and young people want to ‘normalise’ conversations around mental health and music has certainly been a powerful catalyst for this through the campaign.

To find out how Feels FM works (and how you can try it out for yourself!) have a look at this short animation from See Me.