New Year, New Priorities: Mental Health and Neurodivergence

Dougie Boyd, Director of Education and Wellbeing, explains two clear areas of unmet need among young people; mental health provision and neurodivergence support and how Brook proposes to help fill this gap. 

More young people are experiencing challenges around their diagnoses of neurodivergence or mental health conditions. Brook is here to support them. That’s why this year we’re focusing on innovating and developing new support mechanisms to meet these challenges.    

The Problem

We work closely with young people throughout our services; from education settings to participation forums and sexual health clinics. Across the board, our staff are witnessing a decline in young people’s mental health with a rise in unhealthy relationships, self-harm and risk of suicide.  

In 2020/21, we made 116 referrals for people having suicidal thoughts, a suicide plan, self-harming or with serious mental health concerns.  

Our research with young people in 2020 supported this downwards trend with 70% of respondents reporting a decline in their mental health. Similarly, The Children’s Society Good Childhood Report (2021) found that 306,000 10–15-year-olds were unhappy with their lives.  

This decline in mental health during the pandemic has created a huge demand for mental health support services which haven’t been able to keep up.  

2 in 3 young people with a mental health condition are unable to access the NHS care and treatment they need.  

Neurodivergent young people* in particular are more likely to experience mental health issues, a trend our staff have noticed through our 1:1 wellbeing programme ‘MyLife’. Aside from a greater risk of poor mental health, rising numbers of neurodivergent diagnoses and consequent long waiting lists have left many neurodivergent young people without the specific support they need. With an estimated one in seven people being neurodivergent, it’s also essential that services are designed with them in mind.  

Our Solution

Brook has always adopted a holistic approach, recognising the relationship between mental, physical and sexual health. 

We pride ourselves on being responsive to new and emerging challenges that young people face. While our MyLife (early intervention) programme, introduced in 2015 following a decline in mental health, continues to successfully empower young people to improve their mental health and wellbeing, we recognise that this is not enough to meet demand.  

With this in mind, we look forward to working closely with our service users and young people with lived experience,  to adapt our services to support more young people in ways that are meaningful and holistic to them and their circumstances.  

We can’t solve such huge issues alone but we can improve, innovate and partner with others to make sure more young people get the essential support they need. 

Our key priorities for the next year: 

Improving staff and internal capacity by: 

• Adapting our services to ensure they are fully accessible to neurodivergent young people 
• Developing a full curriculum of resources that support neurodivergent young people 
• Equipping staff to confidently and competently support young people with mental health challenges 

Developing new wellbeing programmes including: 

• Counselling and therapeutic services for young people  
• Specific support for neurodivergent young people  

Building partnerships with smaller grass-roots organisations by:

• Financially supporting local and community-based projects that improve the wellbeing of neurodivergent young people through our small grants programme  
• Working with mental health organisations to develop new initiatives  

Enhancing our MyLife Programme by: 

• Introducing a new supervision and case management process
• Extending the MyLife Programme into other areas of wellbeing

We’re looking forward to learning, growing and developing new projects and initiatives that will have a significant impact on the wellbeing of the young people we support.  

*Neurodivergence describes the learning and thinking differences that people may have including (but not limited to) autism, ADHD, learning disabilities and OCD.   

Are you a small organisation working to support neurodivergent young people? We’re accepting applications for our small grants programme until 23rd December 2022. Learn more and apply for our small grants programme.