Family Mental Health Awareness At Home

Obviously, the current ongoing global crisis has presented new and unusual challenges to mental health within families and so we have brought together some links and resources with this in mind.   If you have any resources that you have found particularly helpful, please let us know by emailing lisa@writeplacemedia.co.uk

Watch this space as we release more themed mental health articles, for now here is a comprehensive list of resources that we hope your family find useful.

• 'Every Mind Matters' the Public Health England and NHS project to help empower people to manage and improve their mental health has launched a brand new section giving advice on how to maintain your mental wellbeing in the current climate
• Reading Well for Children is a fantastic list of recommended books to promote mental health and wellbeing with books.  Check out the websites/social media of your local library to see what arrangements they currently have in place as it is possible to access some texts via online systems/audiobooks/ebooks/download.
• Time to Change has collated a top 10 list of mental health tips for adults
• The excellent Booktrust website has put together this list of suggested children's books based around mental health and wellbeing as well as advice for parents
• The BBC Worklife scheme has crowdsourced this excellent article with straight forward advice on how to include mental wellbeing into your everyday life whilst dealing with many competing demands in this current climate

• Newsround have put together this series of videos aimed at older children to discuss mental health issues as well as some updated information for this year's Mental Health Awareness Week
• BBC Learning have put together a series of useful videos for 8-13 year olds on various issues relating to mental health for that age group
• BBC's Bring the Noise campaign has some advice on how to use music to promote positive mental health in children
• MindEd is another government recommended educational resource for all adults on children and young people's mental health
• The Anna Freud National Centre website has wellbeing advice for children and families 
• The British Psychological Society provides advice on dealing with school closures and talking to children about COVID-19
• The Child Bereavement Network provides advice on supporting grieving children during the current Coronavirus outbreak from early years foundation stage to key stage 2ndfulness, happiness and wellbeing.
• Dr. Ranj has recorded a special podcast aimed at children which aims to be informative and reassuring about the current ongoing health situation

• Hey Sigmund has a useful article containing general advice on how to talk to children and teenagers about difficult world events, not just those relating to the current situation.
• The Children's Commissioner has released an official publication aimed at children 
• Children's mental health charity 'Young Minds' has written a blog post about reassuring confused and scared young people
• The government has released online education resources that are useful for parents and children.
• Take a look at these simple mindfulness exercises for kids from the BBC Good Food website
• Place2Be have pulled together advice on how to answer specific questions that children may be asking.
• The Save The Children website has lots of quirky character-based relaxation exercises that can be viewed online or downloaded.
• Finally, one of our favourite YouTube channels Cosmic Kids Yoga has a variety of mindfulness and guided relaxation videos for anxious young minds - see an example below