Lincoln Live Lounge – Dr Alex George
Within this talk Dr Alex George the new UK Youth Mental Heath Ambassador for the department of education and Julie Spencer the head of student wellbeing at the University of Lincoln talk about mental health. The talk focuses on what mental health is, how to cope with mental health, what services are available at Lincoln and what Dr Alex’s new position means in terms of improving mental health in education.
Within the talk Dr Alex talks about how he is an A&E doctor, and that around 1/3 of the patients he sees come in with mental health cases. A&E should not be the first place that people open up about mental health, which is one of the issues Dr Alex wishes to tackle as a mental health ambassador, and get people talking about their issues and getting the support need before it become a crisis.
What Dr Alex wants to focus on as the Youth Mental Health Ambassador:
- Reducing the stigma around mental health
- Improving education and schools approach to wellbeing
- Having mental health higher up on the school curriculum
- More support teams available
- Having intervention earlier, before children develop issues or need referrals
Some of the advice given during the talk about maintaining good mental health was to take time out of your day and putting energy into looking after yourself, getting into good habits and routines early on which can follow you through life, and opening up and talking to others about your feelings rather than bottling them down. By opening up, intervention can occur and reduce the chance of a bigger problem developing.
One of the more interesting topics brought up during that talk was that Dr Alex wanted to focus his attention on informing schools about mental health due to the lack of coverage taught when he was in education. While there seem to be a lot of resources available for university students via students wellbeing centres and website which offer both in person, and virtual support, primary and secondary schools seem to be lacking some of this. This is clearly evident in the research I have conducted previously via my interview with a primary school teachers, and generally research into the curriculum and external resources.
What I have learntÂ
From this talk it is clear that the government and schools are trying to do more to raise awareness of mental health in education, especially in primary and secondary schools where there seems to be less support than at university. Issues such as stigma and trying to get people to open up and seek helps before the issue becomes a crises seem to be the main problems wanting to be addressed.
This suggests that it would be good for my animations to be presented in a way that will help in reducing the stigma of mental health. It would also be beneficial for my animations to show how children could seek help, so that if the feel that their mental health is falling, then they know what to do to get help before the issue gets bigger and needs more critical intention.
Bibliography
University of Lincoln (2021) Lincoln Live Lounge with Dr Alex George [Facebook]. 10 March. Available from: https://fb.watch/4bhYgG6PEr/. [Accessed 13 March 2021].