New research shows alarming number of young people experiencing high levels of loneliness, bullying and anxiety on Isle of Wight.
In May of this year, independent charity The Isle of Wight Youth Trust conducted the first ever Island Youth Mental Health Census, collecting data on the views and experiences of over 2,500 children and young people between the ages of 5-24 years across the Isle of Wight.
Findings from the census have revealed that the mental health crisis facing young people across the country is being felt acutely on the Isle of Wight, where the local NHS Trust was placed into special measures earlier this year, following the Care Quality Commission’s criticism of NHS delivered mental health services, amongst other issues.
Key findings includ:
• 49% of respondents under 7 years of age felt predominately angry, sad or nervous at home.
• 44% of respondents aged between 7-11 years said they felt picked on in the past week at home
• 82% of respondents between 7-11 years felt lonely in school in either the past week or past month
• 44% of respondents aged between 11-24 years reported feeling lonely at home in the past week
• 56% of respondents aged between 11-24 years reported feeling lonely in the past week or month at school
• 64% of respondents aged between 11-24 years reported feeling ‘useless’ at home in the past week or month
• In the past year, 36% of respondents aged 11-24 years have felt worried or anxious always or often
Youth Trust Executive Director, Mairead Healy, has said the findings reflected the charity’s experiences with children and young people through their delivery of one-to one counselling services:
“The three most common reasons young Islanders present for counselling with the Youth Trust are anxiety, depression and difficulties with family relationships. This data strongly reflects that these are issues facing many young people across the Island, not just those accessing our services.
“Mental health services are going through a number of changes at the moment, particularly on the Isle of Wight. We think that this data shows clear areas for improvement and hope that the findings of our Youth Mental Health Census will help ensure that the needs of our young people are at the centre those changes.
Article continues below this advertisement “The Youth Trust is the largest third sector provider of youth mental health services on the Isle of Wight and we are facing growing demand for our services every year. At a time when there is such a clear need for these services to be funded, we have to fight for every penny. Luckily, as an independent charity, we have been blessed with strong community support and are able to completely self-fund our over 18s service and pilot family counselling project.”
Commenting on the census finding, Mairead added:
“Sadly, nearly two thirds of respondents over the age of 11 felt picked on within the past year at school. This supports findings of the 2015 ‘What about YOUth’ survey, which labelled the Isle of Wight as the worst in the country for bullying.
“We were shocked to see that over 40% of 7-11-year olds would feel either uncomfortable or very uncomfortable telling others about their problems and think that this speaks to the stigma surrounding mental health difficulties. It is also worrying in terms of delivering early intervention services, which we know provide children with the best chance of positive long term mental health outcomes and is something we are working to address.
“Following the resignation of our previous MP, Andrew Turner, after he made homophobic comments to a group of school students, we were not surprised to find that more than half of the 11.8% of LGBT identifying respondents had experienced intimidation or threatening behaviour within the past year. Despite being targets of worrying public rhetoric around issues of gender and sexual orientation recently, most who identified as LGTB (87.5%) had told someone. Within this area, there is a lot of positive change taking place on the Island at a grassroots, level, with Isle of Wight Pride and other groups, which we hope will lead to more people feel safe and confident enough to be open about who they are.”
