Parents – talk to your kids about mental health.
‘More than 850,000 children in the UK are diagnosed with a mental illness.’
When I was younger, I’d have to make an excuse to leave the room whenever sex scenes came on the television. I learned to sniff out at a bedroom scene within 30 seconds and escape to make tea, or feign a yawn and head off to bed.
There are many things it’s difficult to talk about with parents. Mental health, apparently, is one of them. Given that one in 10 young people experience mental health issues, it is worrying that 55% of parents in the UK have not discussed mental health at all with their children, according to a new study from the Department of Health and Time to Change. Even more shocking is that 45% of parents interviewed said they haven’t had this conversation because mental health “is not an issue”.
