​With the refreshed mental health strategy for Scotland being published today, it is timely that we report here on Positive Realities first conference held on Thursday 23 February 2017 – Care Well: Mental Health and Young Carers. We were keen to run this event to raise awareness of the mental health needs of young carers amongst practitioners, as many remain hidden carers and often do not get access to much needed support. We know from our work many young carers experience emotional difficulties, such as anxiety, depression and low confidence.

The event brought together some wonderful speakers and input from professionals who attended. Councillor Norman Work, Carers Champion helped us secure the Edinburgh City Chambers as our venue and welcomed everyone to the event.  A big thank you to our Chairs on the day – Joan Fraser, Chair of the Children and Families Network, Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council and Hawys Kilday, Assistant Director of Children Services of Barnardo’s Scotland. Also, thanks to Crescent Kitchen for providing a very tasty lunch!

​Leading up to the event we had two ‘Relax and Recharge’ events for young carers at The Yard. The purpose of these events was predominantly to provide recreational and relaxation activities. A ‘chill out’ area with refreshments was also run, where we asked carers what issues they faced in life and what they wanted more support with. Interestingly, some young carers felt this was their favourite part of the event! They created an amazing vision board which was on display at the conference.

​The morning session focused on the mental health issues faced by young carers with Dr Sue McAndrew, Reader (Mental Health), University of Salford talking about her work running a world café with young carers and practitioners and explained how being a carer can affect carers’ mental health, illustrating her presentation with case studies of young carers.  Dr Carole Kelly, Chief Executive, Positive Realities, highlighted what is known about wellbeing and how it is measured in the UK, before informing delegates about feedback given by young carers at the ‘Relax and Recharge’ events. Key issues identified by the young carers included:

• More time and space to do things we are interested in
• We are aware of what we’d like to do in our future but don’t know how to get there
• We mostly don’t feel very confident
• We struggle to manage our emotions
• Lack of money is a real issue

We were also grateful to welcome Marta Szpindor (a trustee of Positive Realities and a young adult carer), who took part in a question and answer session on her experience as a young carer. During the afternoon, we began thinking about how best to support young carers and what we should do moving forwards.

Edinburgh Young Carers gave a presentation on their services for young carers. Seamus Prior, Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh then introduced mental health first aid and how it can help young carers to look after themselves and the person they care for.

Our last presentation of the day was from Ella Edginton, Consultant, Blake Stevenson and Louise Morgan, Young Carers Development Manager, Carers Trust Scotland on the recent research by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland into the impact of caring. The report is available here.

Finally, we asked everyone what actions were needed to ensure support is available to and accessed by young carers and who should take this forward. There was lots of great input from everyone and the main priorities were:

• Better national co-ordination and strategy
• Raise awareness and reduce stigma associated with mental health
• Secure funding tied in with better implementation of policies
• Take a holistic approach – look at things in contact and communicate
• Raise children to be emotionally intelligent, self-aware and mindful
• Early intervention and prevention – with continuous resources

A more extended write up of the identified priorities for action noted by delegates and the presentations are available to download below*. We hope that organisations responsible for addressing the mental health of young people are more aware of the specific issues affecting young carers and ensure that actions to improve mental health consider how effectively these will address the needs of young carers, notably to reduce potential negative consequences of caring on emotional and mental health.

​* Presentation by Edinburgh Young Carers not available

About a year ago, my oldest school friend had one of the worst experiences a parent could have. At 17 (the same age we had been as best friends) her son took his own life. She has tortured herself wondering what she could have done to prevent this terrible tragedy. She found it impossible to make sense of, not least as he had been going about his daily activities as normal and had been laughing and having fun just a couple of days beforehand.

Not all depressed young people take their own lives and not all suicides are among those with depression. However, depression in childhood is a strong predictor of attempted suicide in adulthood (Harrington et al, 1994). Depression, by its very definition, is long term in nature.  As I know only too well from my own adolescence, the experience of depression can be painful to bare and has an unforgiving and punishing nature. In such circumstances it is little wonder some young people choose suicide as an escape route. 

Harold Koplewicz, an American psychiatrist would describe the pattern of behaviour described by my friend as ‘atypical depression’ and believes this is the most common form of depression in adolescence. He notes although depressed adults may appear visibly sad, young people are more likely to be irritable and touchy. Sometimes with friends, they can even bounce back and seem like their old selves. These factors can make teenage depression hard to spot, not least as mood fluctuations are common during this life stage.

Problems identifying depression can be further compounded when other symptoms exist. As many as a quarter of young people in Scotland with emotional problems have another clinically diagnosed mental disorder (Green et al, 2005). Yet many young people do not seek help for common mental disorders such as depression or anxiety. Many therefore suffer alone, without the professional help they may need.

So how can we best work to reduce the incidence of youth suicide related to depression if mental health problems manifest in confusing or even contradictory ways and young people avoid services for fear of being labelled as having 'mental health issues'? 

Population statistics about which young people are most at risk can help us gain a fuller picture. For instance, family factors can affect the likelihood of children experiencing emotional disorders. In the Green, et al. study children were more likely to have emotional difficulties where parents had no educational qualifications, were a lone parent, were not in employment or on a low income. 

These factors should sensitise professionals to the potential existence of mental health issues amongst certain young people and indicate a greater likelihood of suicide. Factors within the household, such as low income and lack of employment, can significantly increase stress within households and make interpersonal conflict more likely within families (Mountney, 2012). 


Interpersonal conflict was found in one study to be the key trigger for suicide attempts in young people. From a total of 287 persons aged 21 or under, researchers undertook a retrospective analysis of youth evaluated suicide attempts or thoughts in an emergency room setting. The study found arguments with parents were the most common reason for the attempt (20%) whilst other reasons included the end of a relationship (12%) or disputes with a significant other (8%). Conflicts can and do occur within any relationship, irrespective of class. This may explain why some studies on suicide have not found as strong an association with low socio-economic status as others.

It makes sense to extend preventative services to improve the mental health of young people, at the stage when problems first emerge. These interventions should focus on improving relational skills and overall well-being. Teenagers need more space, time and guidance to do this work. 

With appropriate adult guidance, young people can learn greater self-awareness, self-compassion, emotional regulation and how to handle situations so they remain in control and can influence outcomes. Although research shows parents are the 'go to' person for support for children, even the most supportive parents can be increasingly shut out by their teenage child as they move towards adulthood and independence from family. In a world fraught with challenges and competitive striving our service, other guiding adults such as teachers or support workers can help young people develop a positive view of their future. 

Positive Realities provides these opportunities through our life coaching service – a non-stigmatising way of addressing mental health difficulties - and provide the space for this work by young people. We believe such opportunities will considerably improve life chances and self-worth amongst our youth today and help create a society where greater levels of emotional intelligence are displayed by its citizens.  

We inspire young people to value and be kind to themselves, improve their relationships and work towards realising their future dreams. Our data shows significant improvements in the overall well-being of young people who use our life coaching service. If more services like this are provided for young people, hopefully fewer will experience long term distress and ultimately reduce the incidence of suicide, with all its attendant trauma and despair for those, like my friend, left behind. 

Suicide rates, in my opinion, are a measure of how well a country supports its citizens to deal with life's difficulties. Of how much helplessness and hopelessness about life and the future exists to tax individuals in our society. Lets work together to make sure that young people develop the emotional intelligence and resilience skills they need to be versatile, adaptable and truly bounce back from life's adversities. Not in a superficial way, but in a sustained and meaningful way. Over time, this would not only transform the individual but would contribute to a massive societal leap in consciousness. 

If you know of a young person or adult aged 12-25 years living in Edinburgh who would benefit from life coaching please feel free to submit a referral through our website: www.positiverealities.org or call 0131 629 4800.