YoungMinds manifesto

Mental health is as important as physical health, and needs to be everybody's business. 

VIK Film

One in 10 young people in the UK is diagnosed with a serious mental health problem, 80,000 children and young people suffer from serious depression, and two young people kill themselves every day. Yet they are still not getting the support they need in schools, and many are waiting over six months to get treatment.

YoungMinds is campaigning for change. Our young campaigners have created the YoungMinds Manifesto to spell out the changes that must happen to reduce the suffering of young people with mental health problems.

the Youngminds manifesto

  1. Stigma still affects us; it's about time we were able to talk about how we feel.
  2. Deal with problems when we are young; train primary school staff to help.
  3. Growing up is difficult; support us when changes happen in our lives.
  4. Help us to get what we need at secondary school; train everyone to understand teenagers' problems.
  5. Waiting lists and assessments just make it harder; make them shorter and provide us with one worker for all our care.
  6. Some doctors don’t listen to us; they need to understand and support us.
  7. Going to Accident and Emergency can be traumatic; treat us with respect, see beyond our labels.
  8. Some psychiatric units feel like prisons; learn from the best ones.
  9. Someone to speak up for us; we all need advocates.
  10. Lost in the system; don’t forget about us when we are 16 plus.
  11. We’re the experts; start listening to us.

Spending more money on us while we are young will stop us ending up in Accident and Emergency, psychiatric units and prisons, thereby saving taxpayers millions of pounds in the future.

what you can do

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