Mental Health

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It is estimated that more than one in five girls self-harm in the UK. One parent details the journey from the realisation that her teen was self-harming, through the maze of bureaucracy to try and get help. 

We will follow mum and daughter’s story over the next few weeks. Links to organisations that can offer help and support are listed at the bottom of this post.

Chapter One. “Mum, I cut myself”

I will never forget that day. My daughter came into the room and said, “I’ve cut myself”. “Oh,” I replied, “how did that happen?” She looked at me and paused and said again more slowly. “I cut myself”.

Normally my daughter, who is 12, looks much older than her years but at that moment in time she looked like a young child again. Her face was such a mixture of confused emotions; pleading for help, plus embarrassment and perhaps shame mixed in as well. I remember that moment so clearly. It was like when you watch films and they freeze the frame.

Reality kicked in and I went into practical mode. I remember telling her not to worry and that we could clean it up. It was a large cut on her arm. Much later I found out she’d done it with a pair of kitchen scissors. We talked about why she’d done it and she started to cry. “I don’t know” she said and became even more upset.

I tried to reassure her and told her everything was fine, and I just sat hugging her whilst she wept.

I look back at that moment in hindsight and realise I am lucky. Obviously, I wish my daughter didn’t feel the need to harm herself. But I have discovered that so many parents find out much further down the line or worse, that many children self harm without telling anyone or feeling able to ask for help. I feel lucky that my daughter could let me know what she had done.

Later that night I cried and cried. I spent the whole night worrying and asking myself questions. Why had she done it? Was this all my fault? Why did she feel the need to hurt herself rather than come and talk to me? Was this a one off? Was this an attempt to kill herself? Would she try and cut herself again that night? What was going through her mind when she was cutting herself? What had happened to her to make her want to hurt herself in that way?  Should I have contacted someone for help? Who do you contact for help? Would other people blame me?

As a parent I had always felt that I could solve my children’s problems. This was the first time that I felt helpless and didn’t know how to help her. We both needed help.

Read more from our blogger mum’s story:

 

Where to get help and advice

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We want to send a great big thank you to everyone who has supported the Brighton5 Crowdfunder to raise vital funds for Brighton5’s next project, which is to work with teens and local schools and colleges to tackle mental health issues. We’d also like to pick your brains!

Launching a Crowdfunder has been a huge learning curve! It sometimes feels like we’re looking after a newborn baby – one that needs feeding every couple of hours! Our team is all hands on deck updating, posting to social media and contacting everyone we know, and everyone they know! We’ve even had a tweet from Alan Carr!

Our biggest challenge is to get the word out to as many people in Brighton & Hove as possible. And whilst our priority is to raise the funds for the project, we also want to spread the word about what we’re doing and why it’s so important. So here’s our question: how can we get our message out to an even wider group of people? We want to reach parents who feel that they need help as well as teachers and teens. If just 10% of people in Brighton & Hove donate £1, we’ll have reached our target! Please get in touch or leave a comment and help us to get this project funded. Thank you!

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Brighton5 crowdfunder

Hello friends! We’ve just launched our Brighton5 crowdfunder which has it’s official launch on Wednesday 10th October on World Mental Health Day.

We want to get as many people involved in our Crowdfunder as possible and with that in mind, we’re campaigning for people to donate anything from £1 (hopefully more!) to the fund, and to pass it on – to recommend every friend and colleague donate too – to give #1forBrighton5! With 300,000 people in Brighton & Hove, we could reach our target if just 10% of residents donate £1! That would be an amazing feat, and also spread the word about our amazing project and our amazing teens.

So now it’s over to you. Please donate, share the link and tell everyone about Brighton5 – on Facebook, on Twitter, Instagram, on the bus, at the school gates, at work… you get the picture! A huge thanks to you all.

Love from the Brighton5 team x

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According to Ofcom, one in five teens spend over seven hours a day on their mobile phone, and, on average, people in the UK check their phones every 12 minutes. (Here’s a challenge: will you get to the end of this blog post without giving your mobile a sneaky peek?)

These are shocking statistics. And the news that Brighton5 is working to turn the negative side of teen smartphone addiction on its head – and encourage kids to explore why they’re so dependent on their devices – means that we’ve spent quite a bit of time this month giving interviews about teens and their smartphone addiction.

We’re no experts, but we are parents. We’ve watched our teens spend hours glued to their phones, worrying that they’re disrupting their sleep patterns (could we, should we confiscate their devices at night?); wondering what they’re watching and who they’re communicating with on Snapchat or WhatsApp or whatever-other-app-I-haven’t-even-heard-of-yet! Parents who grew up in an era without the constant, needy buzz going off in their pockets can find it hard to understand their teen and what their device means to them. Brighton5’s Daisy Cresswell talked to her daughter about the time she confiscated her device and her daughter described feeling “naked and stripped” as well as being “really bored”.

Brighton5 wants to give teens the opportunity to use their phones and technology for good. We’re going to get them to create amazing content that they can share with their friends and peers to help them better understand the possible downsides of their dependence on their phones, and to make positive change.

Brighton5 teens filming
Brighton5 teens filming

Interested? If you want to get involved, get in touch and subscribe to this blog. We’ll be updating it with our progress over the next few months. Have a great weekend!