Blog

What difficulties are schoolchildren currently bringing to therapy, and how might we help? Dr Sharie Coombes, a headteacher turned leading child and family psychotherapist and author, has been observing the mixed impact of the resumption of school routines. Combining psychodynamic exploration with neuroscientific psychoeducation, she shares her work with one anxious and panic-stricken child.

How can we help children find safety, feel grounded, and express themselves during the Covid outbreak? As we mark Children’s Mental Health Week, arts counsellor Anna Atkinson shares useful creative approaches from her work in a primary school inclusion team – and reflects on when a simple online game might actually be the best intervention.

What impact might Covid-19, and systemic racial injustice, be having on young people? How can we help them feel safe in these uncertain times? What challenges – and opportunities to do things differently – might lie ahead? This month, PESI UK will be asking some of the world’s top clinicians and thought leaders as part of a free, three-day Children and Young People’s Mental Health Summit. Join Peter Levine, Stephen Porges, Barnardo’s CEO Javed Khan and others for nine free discussions on the most pressing topics in children’s mental health.

On Friday, UK schools will join others around the world in closing due to the coronavirus crisis. How will family life need to change? Child therapist and Clinical Professor of Psychology Kenneth Barish draws on his conversations with families who are already living through this, to suggest four key ways in which parents can be supported to help children through this time.

Getting away from technology and out into nature is fundamentally important for our mental health. In the third of her week-long series of blogs to mark Children’s Mental Health Week, Dr Fiona Pienaar explains why we should all be stepping away from technology and engaging with the Great Outdoors – and reflects on the key skills this can foster, not just in children, but in therapists.

Young people’s digital use is in the headlines at the moment. But it is adults who face the challenge of monitoring children’s time on social media, and who have a responsibility to model healthy behaviour. In the second of a week-long series of blogs to mark Children’s Mental Health Week, Dr Fiona Pienaar draws our attention to the Family Media Use Plan, and suggests parents – and practitioners – get involved in thinking about digital mental health.

In the first of a week-long series of blogs to mark Children’s Mental Health Week, Dr Fiona Pienaar draws our attention to key findings from the recent survey into the mental health of children and young people. What are the current rates of mental disorder in this age bracket? Which groups are particularly at risk? And what are the trends in preschool mental health? When it comes to meeting our collective responsibility, these statistics are a galvanising place to start.

Reading, writing and arithmetic may be the ‘three Rs’ of schooling. But when it comes to the internal education of children, we have a new set of Rs: reflective skills, relational intelligence, and resilience. Leading neuroscientist Dan Siegel is the author of several bestsellers about child and adolescent minds, and believes interpersonal neurobiology can offer profound insights for the future of young people’s mental health. Here he introduces some of the key ideas he will be presenting at February’s Developing Minds conference as part of Children’s Mental Health Week 2019.