Supporting Teens: Mental Health in Adolescence

Unknown speaker

Hello, welcome back to another episode of Zevo Talks. Today we are joined by Mr. Keira Conley. We’re going to look at the area of mental health and adolescence and how basically as adults, important people within this age group, we can support them.

Unknown speaker

So suppose we’re going to start off and just welcome Keira on. Keira, thank you very much for joining us. Lovely to see you. It’s a pleasure to talk to you. I suppose can we just start off with telling us a bit about yourself.

Unknown speaker

I know you’ve been on before, but just to rejig our memories. Yeah, so my name is Keira Conley. I’m an integrative counsellor and wellbeing specialist here at Zevo Health. So just a little bit about my practice.

Unknown speaker

It’s quite diverse. I’m working with teenagers and young adults in supporting them through studies, through kind of soothing and regulating difficult emotions and talking about bullying and managing academic stress really.

Unknown speaker

And then I’m also supporting adults and parents as well with self-care, work-life balance and supporting their loved ones too. So basically the way that I work is that my therapeutic models are grounded in the humanistic approach.

Unknown speaker

So basically what that means is that when I meet an individual, depending on what they bring to the session, we then build the therapy model around them rather than having a model ready to go and then meeting the client and working in that kind of structured way.

Unknown speaker

So I truly believe that there’s no one size fits all when it comes to therapy and self-care. It’s really about getting to know one another, getting to know yourself and developing a model from that. So it’s great to be here again and chatting with you, Rochelle.

Unknown speaker

Thank you very much for having me today. I think we might just start off by having a little look at what exactly is teen mental health? How is it different from even childhood mental health or adult mental health?

Unknown speaker

What’s kind of the differentiation factors there? Yeah, sure. So I suppose that it is important that we consider that mental health You know, mental health is mental health, you know, I would believe that there’s seven different factors that contribute to our wellbeing.

Unknown speaker

So you have like your physical, your social, your financial, your intellectual and your environment, all the rest of it as well. But obviously with age, you know, it’s going to vary a little bit. Maybe the different influential factors and protective factors might differ.

Unknown speaker

So for example, you know, depression in an adolescent and depression in an adult, they probably feel the same. However, they might present differently. OK, so an adult may be able to articulate themselves a lot better.

Unknown speaker

Maybe they’ve had experience with it before or they might have a more clear sign of where they can go around this. So they can say, OK, I’m going to go to my GP, I’m going to go to a counsellor or something like that.

Unknown speaker

But then when we’re talking about the mental health of the young people in this country. they might not have the tools and the coping skills to deal with the emotional experience of, let’s say, anxiety and depression.

Unknown speaker

Also as well, I’m sure we can both reflect back to our times being teenagers, it’s quite turbulent. There’s a whole lot of stuff going on, you know, we think of, you know, even our education system, it’s quite intense, you know, you’ve got huge expectations there, you’re studying so many different different topics, lots and lots of homework, I can remember doing homework for hours, even after when I’d come home.

Unknown speaker

And then you’ve got your family, you’ve got friends, you’ve got your extracurricular activities that you want to be doing. So with age just comes different problems, okay, there’s different expectations there.

Unknown speaker

And so that’s going to require different coping skills. And when you’re an adolescent, we’re kind of in the trial and error phase, really trying to learn different skills, different things. So it’s important that our relationships also change when as we get older.

Unknown speaker

So if you think about childhood, our relationships with our parents and our family, that evolves for sure. In our adolescence, we’re kind of fighting for this independence, but yet we still need the support of our loved ones.

Unknown speaker

And then when we go to adulthood, sure, we can reflect back again, I’m kind of stepping out going to college, maybe moving home, that’s, you know, there’s a whole new set of fears there as well. So because, you know, the whole reason we have those kind of childhood, adolescent, young adults and adulthood is because we know that when we’re talking about those different sections, we kind of have an idea of different challenges and skills that are kind of represented by that term.

Unknown speaker

So when it comes to kind of, in short, then to answer your question, it absolutely does change and vary because the life experience varies expectations and the importance of our relationships are going to change too.

Unknown speaker

I thought something you said before we actually started the recording, we were trying yesterday, but I thought it was very interesting. It was basically like teen mental health or adolescent adolescent mental health should I say whatever way you look at it it’s quite a broad range it’s not exactly teen it’s not 13 to 18 or 12 to 19 that sort of thing it can go to 25 and like I just said there like there is such a pressure on younger like teens up to kind of mid-20s to kind of you need to have figured out when you need to have a general direction and I don’t know about you but when I was I don’t know when I was mid-teen the early 20s I didn’t know there is a lot of pressure put on everyone and even that kind of it’s not there’s not a cutoff point to what I mean what stage or what age you do need to have things figured out by yeah and that’s really important um yeah we touched on this a little bit yesterday so in a sense that you you know let’s say we start school let’s say go we go into like second school around like 12 okay So we’re seeing that huge change straight away coming from primary school,

Unknown speaker

then into secondary school. But as you said, it doesn’t stop when you turn 18. It’s not like you go, oh, okay, I don’t know, all my problems are solved. No, we get dealt a whole new deck of different challenges and problems.

Unknown speaker

And it’s really important that when we talk about kind of adolescents and teens, I don’t like putting huge numbers on it, being like, hey, adolescent stops at 18. We know that these permanent times continue the whole way as we’re evolving into adults.

Unknown speaker

And we can see a lot with kind of community-based services, thankfully here in Ireland, such as Jigsaw, that they are very inclusive of that age range, supporting people from the ages of 12 all the way up to 25.

Unknown speaker

So it’s super important for any teenagers or younger adults listening today, or even parents listening that we constantly need support. We all need those people to rely on, and we’ll talk about that a little bit later.

Unknown speaker

But it is, it’s really important that we recognize that once we finish school, we don’t need to have anything figured out. We should want to explore things for ourselves to find, let’s say, an occupation that’s going to allow us to love our job and also give us that financial benefit to have the things that we want to have as well.

Unknown speaker

But to be mindful of the expectations that are definitely putting us from school, from society, and just kind of sitting with them and be like, okay, is this my expectation for myself? Do I want this?

Unknown speaker

Or is this everyone else telling me that I need it? But yeah, for sure. This continues the whole way through life, but it’s definitely probably the most intense, kind of all the way up to our late 20s, early 30s, for sure.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, that’s good news, not bad news, I suppose. Here, I suppose, if you think about it, we weren’t, at that stage too long ago, without giving way too much. And even in the last 10, 15 years, the struggles that we’ve had, that people that are like, the youth has been my joke, like it’s a completely different set of issues.

Unknown speaker

Well, maybe not completely, but there’s a lot of different things that younger people would deal with now that we didn’t have to deal with. Like I remember when we, or when I was in school, I think like Instagram, the monster that it is today, I only got that when I finished secondary school.

Unknown speaker

So like I, obviously there was a different set of issues and struggles and whatever, but I can’t imagine if you had a term that means the next, just the world is evolving and everything’s changing every day and every year.

Unknown speaker

And there’s just so many different things. Like what would you say are the factors facing and stressing out teens and adolescents? Yeah. Well, as you said, it’s hard to pinpoint it exactly because it is changing so much.

Unknown speaker

I’m the eldest of four, and sometimes I see what my youngest siblings doing, and I’m like, you’re doing what now? What happened? I’m too young to not be able to follow, to keep up with them, but it’s changing super, super fast.

Unknown speaker

So when it comes to looking at, okay, what are the main issues that teens are facing today? One of my favorite surveys that I’ve been done so far, either My World Survey, so you have My World Survey 1, which is on 2012, I believe, and then we had a second survey which delved into it a little bit deeper, and had a bit more of a broader scope, and we’re definitely ready for My World Survey 3.

Unknown speaker

It would be fantastic to see what comes next. So what we’re seeing at the moment is, I touched this before, is that the academic stress exams homework, that is a really, really high stress factor that we’re seeing for teens at the moment, concerns about the future as well, which I suppose when you hear the first one, it doesn’t sound too surprising that that would come naturally, because why are we doing the exams probably for the CAO and different courses,

Unknown speaker

and to have the finances to build whatever the life we want is. Finance actually, interestingly enough for me when I first remember reading this, the finances was quite stressful for the young people of Ireland today.

Unknown speaker

Finances with regards to, okay, I want to do all these things, do I have the money to do it? But also, finances with regards to we’re living in a cost of living crisis, and that’s impacting the family and the family structures, and teens that are aware of this, they hear of this as well, so they also have concerns about the disability of their family, and maybe concerns for their siblings or family members as well,

Unknown speaker

with regards to finances, body image. Body image is one that comes up and is talked about a lot. Thankfully with the work that this study has done, it really did gear a lot of supports. So we’re seeing a lot of kind of workshops and trainings being done in schools with regards to some of the issues that I mentioned in here today, bullying.

Unknown speaker

Bullying is something that was there I remember even when I was in school, there was huge initiatives around raising awareness around bullying and kind behavior and unkind behavior and what to do if you see someone who is being bullied, how to support one another.

Unknown speaker

So relationships are gonna be huge for teenagers, the success of relationships, the failure of relationships, bullying. And that also extends to their family as well. So not just their friends in school, their family feeling that support and love when they come home and how their family are doing as well.

Unknown speaker

Remember who we surround ourselves with is going to influence how we feel. And if we know or can recognize someone else is struggling. that may have an impact on on us as well of how we’re feeling. So these are the probably the most popular issues and that are that the teens are that the teens sorry the teenagers are experiencing today and some of the kind of um some of the statistics from my world survey too um that kind of jumped out at me and I thought would be really great to mention just to try and add to I want to talk a little bit about stigma later on um in in the podcast but just to kind of get a grasp on what teenage mental health is and how it is affecting the younger population in Ireland is that the survey found that 40 percent um of levels of depression from the survey were outside of the normal range 49 percent of the levels of anxiety were outside of the normal normal range of the people who participated in the study so we’re seeing really we’re seeing quite high levels of depression and anxiety in these uh in these young people um interestingly enough we found that uh we found sorry I wish I was a part of that study but uh 96 of the participants had social media profiles and as we were saying there like social media blew up when we were kind of in school and stuff like that and and interestingly with that this research found that two thirds of that 96 spent more than two hours a day on their phone but the remaining four percent they actually um sorry the remaining third they had spent less than two hours on their on their phone and this was linked to lower levels of depression and anxiety so they didn’t have uh you know they were within that normal range but interestingly they had lower support from friend from French sorry lower support from friends and uh a lower perceived of support focused coping so isn’t that very interesting because we often see the phone painted as the bad guy and obviously I think we’ve spoken about this before in a couple episodes back the impact on social media on our wellness and with regards to self-care.

Unknown speaker

But also it serves so many so many positives as well and we find those who spent a little bit less found that the connection and the support from their friends was that was a little bit lower. So I’m curious you know it’s a it’s all about kind of finding this this balance for the teenagers in Ireland today but with everything else that they’re having to do.

Unknown speaker

This is just one more one more thing that we can figure out but thankfully you know with the support of parents, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, GPs, our family as well. Hopefully today at the end of the podcast we have some idea of how we can actually achieve achieve that balance or support adolescents and actually cultivating that for themselves.

Unknown speaker

I suppose key or interesting there is like the chat and the use of the phone. Like so often the phone is like it’s painted with the most negative brush. And it’s very much like, you know, reduce this, reduce that and whatever.

Unknown speaker

But like, I think we all know as well, there’s so many different positive ways that we can all use our phone. And let’s face it, everyone has a phone. So it’s, it does seem a bit, a bit silly almost to just paint it with the, the negative brush.

Unknown speaker

Like I know for myself, no, I’m a, I am bad and I hold my hand up. I do spend too much time on social media. But I also use it for positive things. Like I use it every day for even just basic stuff, Spotify.

Unknown speaker

I’ll go out and I’ll listen to a podcast for an hour while I’m walking, but technically I’m using my phone there. I’ll use it for a meditation app. Yeah, technically I’m using my phone. That’s positive.

Unknown speaker

That’s happened to my overall wellbeing. Like it is very easy to just automatically, the phone is negative. But like also the connection, the last few years we’ve been through and like right now the tools are chatting over teams.

Unknown speaker

We’re not sitting together. Yeah. Like the connection a phone can give to people that might not see to it from one end of them onto the other. Well, I suppose the key thing is that you’re, you’re able to tell me all the positive things that you do with, with your phone and it allows you access to so, so many, so many things.

Unknown speaker

And then I suppose that really is the key point. It’s how we’re accessing the phone, how we’re utilizing it. And when we are, you know, on certain applications and apps, how does it make me feel and how are we talking to ourselves while we’re using them?

Unknown speaker

So what, what, what this kind of study really showed us was the fact that, okay, 96% had, had phones, I had social media. That’s absolutely fine. But two thirds were spending, two thirds were spending more than two hours a day on, on those social media apps.

Unknown speaker

And they were, they were having higher levels of anxiety and depression. And the ones who were spending less time on the phone, they had less of the anxiety and depression, but also the anxiety and depression.

Unknown speaker

also they found that their connection and their perceived kind of strength of their social support was less. So what we want to be having a look at here really is it’s not really much the time, it’s not really you know whether you know social media is bad or good because a lot of the time I know that parents will take the funds away and as you said it’s a source of connection, it’s a source of catching up with people after the day of school and bonding and also researching and we find so much interesting stuff online and also for the laughs you know there’s some really funny things online too that can give us a sense of joy when we need it you know and when we’re taking a break from study and whatnot but anyways go back to the point is when we’re on social media we want to be mindful of those comparison behaviours,

Unknown speaker

we want to be mindful of the phone being able to connect people anywhere in the world as you said but it’s for kind talk, it’s for positive talk and it’s not for bullying or for judgment so really what we want to do is for people to have a healthy connection with social media and with their phones, allow them the freedom to use it as, you know, to research those interests and to talk to you, do they want to,

Unknown speaker

but for it to be safe, which can be really, really difficult because one of the things adolescents really want is that independence, the choice to make their own decisions. So how do we, as, you know, as parents say, or for myself as a big sister or a cousin or an aunt, how do I help them to make the right decisions?

Unknown speaker

And really it’s through that open discussion and showing the positive and negative sides of social media and, you know, trying best to have a balance. If we’re spending, you know, so much time on our phone, we still want to make sure that we have the time to do the other things that we enjoy, such as, you know, look after our hygiene, see our family, visit our friends and do those extra extracurricular activities.

Unknown speaker

So yeah, it’s really about how we’re using the phone. That’s what’s going to impact the way that we feel. Absolutely. We had someone on the podcast a while ago, and I can’t remember him, could allow you for me, but there was one thing and it was very much like, which is kind of, I suppose, someone maybe at the adolescent stage might enjoy, but at the end of the day, we’re in control of how we use our phone,

Unknown speaker

what we follow, what we engage with, like the likes of, I’m just going to use Instagram for the example here. I know there’s obviously other networks that we’re probably too well to understand, but Instagram, you can follow people that you don’t like and you can give out about them, but why are you, like, why would you want that?

Unknown speaker

Follow pages that, like, to say, I like following a lot of, like, pages that put up, like, nice stuff about wellbeing, about dogs, about food, about different stuff going on around Dublin that I can go to and stuff like that, different restaurants, stuff that will, like, basically at the end of the day, will give me some pleasure and enjoyment.

Unknown speaker

So it’s just kind of about, like, taking the step back and how do I want to use this. Because I think we all find it very, very hard to all of a sudden not. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I’m like, it’s like when we see statistics like this, you know, we can really just say, you know, oh, two thirds had high levels of anxiety, depression throughout throughout the phones, you know, that that’s kind of it.

Unknown speaker

But we have to keep reading and see, okay, so there was also also positives, positive to be accurate, a feed that makes you feel good. If you notice that there are people that aren’t making you feel good, hide their profiles, if you can block them, remove them from that from that follow list, you know, even the likes of like TikToks and stuff like that, you can if, like, ads even or videos come up,

Unknown speaker

you can hold it down and say, I’m not interested in this and provide that feedback. You know, there’s an algorithm there for a reason, we can actually tap into that algorithm to help our mental health.

Unknown speaker

But unfortunately, if we’re engaging with the wrong things, it can actually have have the opposite effect. So it is it’s all about using social media mindfully, and then helping teams to have those tools and that information so they can make that decision for themselves as they grow older and hopefully have a positive relationship with social media and the internet and all the wonderful things that it has to offer.

Unknown speaker

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We aim to create the healthiest workplace across the globe to ensure that your most important assets, your employees are energized and thriving. Contact us today to start your workplace well-being journey www.zevohealth.com And you know even with with you know we’re kind of talking about the importance of open conversation and stuff, the support that adolescents receive is is so helpful.

Unknown speaker

So the My World 2 survey surveyed just under 10 and a half thousand people from the ages of 12 to 19 in Irish schools. Like that’s a huge study considering what our population would have been like four million back then you know.

Unknown speaker

So it was it was absolutely fantastic and we found that you know the family and friends and this what My World’s survey one found was that the the positive impact of having one good adult okay. So 76 percent of people say that they have an adult that they can turn to and they this person is you know available to them and they’re more I’m available to them for like advice and just to talk to them without that piece of judgment those people did present themselves in the normal range of anxiety and depression so having that support that you can turn to when you feel that you can speak openly and freely that is worth its weight in gold because think you know when we think about everything we went through as teenagers all the different questions here in terms that we haven’t heard before you know it’s a very very confusing time so having a soundboard that you can kind of air this stuff out to is so important and other things that really help are the things that really help and that’s important for teenagers and I’m sure anyone teenagers have heard this from their parents and parents have heard this from the likes of of of myself but sleep sleep is so important it’s important to us at all ages at all ages but it’s something that adolescents I seem to kind of struggle with 53% had quite low sleep hygiene so this is going to have an impact on your physical and and your your mental well-being it can also contribute to the stress that we’re having at school as well,

Unknown speaker

because we’re not coming in with enough fuel in the tank, essentially, for a very, very difficult day. But thankfully, we actually see that young adults, so this is between the 19 to 25-year-olds, that this does improve and about 62% showed that they had quite good hygiene.

Unknown speaker

So if we can support teens in learning about the importance of sleep and trying to help them to establish a routine where they can get everything done that they want to end the day, but still get that kind of eight to nine hours sleep, that would be absolutely fantastic.

Unknown speaker

Again, as always, exercise is super important, it’s linked to improved wellbeing. And then also having fun, making sure that it’s time for the extracurricular activities, especially, you know, when you’re in school and you’re dealing with all of these stresses, I’m going through this kind of ever-changing phase in our lives.

Unknown speaker

Sometimes you can feel like and it can feel also consuming. So, you know, it’s important that we’re encouraging teens to take breaks and we’re kind of creating a routine for them to allow them to have breaks.

Unknown speaker

The expectations that we have for them aren’t going to be consuming and overwhelming for them that they are realistic and they do kind of fit within their own needs. So, Keira, you mentioned some kind of misconceptions surrounding teenage behaviour, like with people that, I don’t know, they might have had children older, so like their kind of their own experience doesn’t seem as relevant to, you know,

Unknown speaker

that kind of sort of happened 20 years. I remember when I was a kid even, my mom would use to talk, or I think it was her intro cert or something, which for us was the junior cert, but I was kind of like, oh my God, that’s a million years.

Unknown speaker

It just, it didn’t seem relevant. So I suppose like having that kind of like understanding between, understanding different misconceptions and just where the behaviour and where that came in from really.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, yeah. So I said, yeah, exactly. So like the school system has changed so, so much. Like even I hear, like say, like some of my cousins talk about, they got H2s and H3s and I’m like, hey, What’s the next one?

Unknown speaker

That’s right over my head. That sounds like a boss number. So it is, you know, like when we think about education, it’s completely changed, but also society is changing all of the time. There’s different trends, different values always, kind of being prompted at us, but also as well.

Unknown speaker

We’re talking about mental health today. Mental health has changed. Our conversations around mental health has changed, and that’s probably like one of the biggest ones, especially when we’re thinking of teens, mental health, and one of the things I’ve talked about today is that one good adult, and exactly what that is, is having that one person that teens can turn to and that being really, really supportive for their mental health,

Unknown speaker

but the attitudes towards mental health across, you know, the different age ranges in society today, it differs. So one of the biggest misconceptions that I have experienced and what we see kind of published a lot of the time is that belief that teenagers don’t have anything to be depressed about.

Unknown speaker

It’s just moodiness. Now, of course, moods, they’re real. they do fluctuate, there’s a lot of huge hormonal changes that are going on and there’s a huge lot of stress with the transition period that they’re going through.

Unknown speaker

So obviously they’re going to feel overwhelmed from from time to time going through that transition from like childhood to teenager to adult you know for being dependent independent and fighting for that independence when the parents are like no you’re not just an adult just yet you know.

Unknown speaker

So it’s that that is that is true there is going to be moodiness there okay but mood they’re mood swings for a reason they swing they come and they go whereas if you’re noticing the same kind of mood over a period of two weeks it is it is possible that they could be experiencing a period of anxiety or depression or there is something significant happening in their life that is having an impact on their mood at this point we need to check in they absolutely do have a lot of things going on they’re going to have a significant influence on their mental health and sometimes they need the additional support to find the coping skills and the tools to deal with that.

Unknown speaker

Another one that I’m maybe from maybe from either from kind of older generations or people who aren’t very sure about mental health is that they perceive mental health to be violent and adolescents with mental health issues can can be something to be afraid of.

Unknown speaker

Now there are some mental health issues that can cause us to be violent or have violent behaviors but not all of them like we shouldn’t be afraid of anxiety and depression remember these are moods we all experience feelings of anxiety feelings of anxiety like feeling anxious or maybe a little bit panicked or afraid of something and we all feel sad from time time to time you know there’s sometimes we believe that you know what an adult is feeling is different to what a child is feeling remember I was saying that they often kind of feel the same but the way that an adult can communicate and a teenager communicate that’s where the difference can be so even though behaviors can seem kind of quite erratic or you know maybe they’re angry and we have the mood swings.

Unknown speaker

That is communication. Something isn’t feeling good, something isn’t right. Another one is that parents are the cause. One thing I’ve spoken about the whole way through this podcast is being a one good adult, parents having these open conversations, people around the teens having these open conversations.

Unknown speaker

I hope it’s really important at this point, we just pause for a second and recognise that parents have their own lives and responsibilities. They have to look after themselves as well, parents of care and anyone who is a carer of a teenager or loves a teenager or knows a teenager.

Unknown speaker

Sometimes you do feel that pressure that’s there. It’s really important that you care for yourself and often you might hear comments or remarks pass at all. the parents cause that or parents feeling it’s my fault.

Unknown speaker

Now, early traumatic experiences can trigger the onset of mental health issues but a lot of the time it’s genetics, it’s environmental and has absolutely nothing to do with the parents, okay? So if you are listening here to hear today don’t forget that as much as it is important to look after the teens and the young people that we have in our life that we love so much it is super, super important for you to look after yourself and it can be difficult,

Unknown speaker

you know, living and dealing and watching someone go through this really difficult transition. If you would like to talk to someone please reach out to the GP, reach out to the counsellor, being a parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world and then you have people with multiple children as well so do, do look after yourself, okay?

Unknown speaker

And talking about looking after ourselves there’s also the misconception that teenagers can’t be diagnosed with mental health issues or diagnosis at this early stage in their life so this can be true for, for some mental health illnesses they are diagnosed at adolescence but for the likes of anxiety and depression the two that we’ve mainly really kind of spoken about today these absolutely can be diagnosed at young age more often than not they actually present mental health issues present themselves in our younger earlier phases of life so if you are noticing these changes within the children and the young adults around you please encourage them to go to the GP.

Unknown speaker

Sometimes we hear that medication isn’t needed but it absolutely can be beneficial just as it’s beneficial to adults it can be beneficial for adolescents too but again go to the GP and they’ll be able to, to help you, help you with that that’s really, really important that we keep in touch with that primary care service.

Unknown speaker

I suppose then we might have a quick look at basically just like the whole kind of area of reframing our idea about teenage mental health as I said like it can be I don’t know it can be very easy for people to trouser eyes to have and that sort of thing where whereas it is important to take it seriously, look out for the signs and kind of, if it does arise, deal with it properly.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I suppose now is really good time just touch base on what I’ve been using the phrase one good adult to really just hone down on exactly what that is. So it’s all about, you know, with teenage mental health, we want to be having these open conversations with the parents, the aunts and uncles, everyone about mental health and how it can affect ourselves but also the teenagers around us.

Unknown speaker

We want to be addressing that stigma and it’s through conversations like we’re having today through cyber education, that we’ll be able to address those boundaries that are there and those misconceptions that we spoke about there just a few minutes ago.

Unknown speaker

Remember to link in with your GP if you are concerned. Okay, GP is fantastic. And later on, just as we’re closing, I’ll give some more suggestions of some helpful resources for everyone who’s listening.

Unknown speaker

you know the gp if we’re not if you’re not sure of exactly what to do that’s absolutely fine you can always link in there and get some really good advice encourage good sleep hygiene and support the formation of our friendships as well you know we talked about the phone a little bit today and there’s that fear mongering for sure that i see coming through being like okay phone internet it’s all bad let’s take it away but it is super important and integrated into our society today so we want to help to cultivate and allow the formation of really strong positive relationships with social media that’s there and jigsaw do um some fantastic workshops that people can have a have a look at a little later if they’d like to just on their on their website um if they want to learn more about social media there’s also loads of community-based workshops that go on there as well um and again it’s really important to take breaks to take breaks for fun to take breaks during study you know we want to be managing fatigue fatigue and everything else that comes up but when it comes to being that one good adult being that one person that teenagers can and come back to listening is so important that you have that skill to listen to to the the teenager who’s coming to confine on you you’re going to help them find solutions to their problems we’re not jumping in or telling them what to do we’re working collaboratively with them you know we’re almost showing them the way of how to reach a positive solution except in the young people for who they are it is you know this is a non-judgmental space that a one good adult provides for them that is why the the teenager will come back again for future advice as well and challenge them to push their boundaries a little bit open their minds you know this is their first time where we might have experienced this before whereas for them it’s their first time so you know we want to think about how it felt for us at that time and what was helpful to us when we lent on someone for support there um you know we want to um help them you know be organized learn those organizational skills dropping those huge expectations on them be like okay you need to do this this teach them show them and plan trips away plan that fun for them,

Unknown speaker

keep an eye on their routine, check in with them essentially, check in with them. Just being there is enough sometimes. A lot of the times they don’t want a solution. Always ask, do you want my help on this?

Unknown speaker

Sometimes listening is just enough, but what we have found or what research has shown us is that not having a one good adult was linked to higher levels of distress, antisocial behaviour and increased behaviour for suicidal behaviours as well.

Unknown speaker

But having that one good adult was linked to higher esteem, success in school, positive mental health and they’re more likely to seek help and that is going to have a huge reduction on those risk-taking behaviours as well.

Unknown speaker

If anyone wants to learn a little bit more about this, I strongly recommend you guys going on to the myworldsurvey2.ie. The website there is absolutely fantastic. looking at Jigsaw for some different workshops on support, adolescent and young adults mental health and also there’s some self-care there for parents as well.

Unknown speaker

You can visit the GP, your counsellor, your psychologist, spawnout.ie is a fantastic youth information website as well which has all of the resources that I’m mentioning today and remember that community-based support there by Jigsaw is inclusive of 12 all the way up to 25.

Unknown speaker

Super, super important for everyone to know that it’s a free counselling service but in short guys who can be a good adult? Absolutely anyone. You could be a neighbour, a teacher, a parent, a cousin.

Unknown speaker

The key is to be available, reliable, listen and show empathy so we’re understanding their experience without judgment and no rolling of the eyes, no tutting or general disapproval. We want to be mindful of this.

Unknown speaker

We’re creating that safe space where they have our full attention. We’re not rushing them, we’re listening to them and then asking would you like me to offer some advice or do you want to hash this out together?

Unknown speaker

Let’s see, can we come up with a solution here? But yeah, thank you so much for having me Michelle. I think we’ll probably stop here before it gets super, super overwhelming but was there any more final questions that you had for me or anything like that before we end?

Unknown speaker

Kira, thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you very much for having me. It’s been great, fantastic. It’s fantastic. I can’t wait to be on again. It’s always a pleasure to have you and thank you very much for listening to another episode to Zilo Talks and we look forward to helping you again next time.