Changing Young Lives Using Mindfulness and Therapeutic Life Coaching

The Emotional Health and Wellbeing of our young people remains our greatest challenge. Exam targets, conformity pressures and the 24/7 spotlight of social media are just some of the reasons cited for the rises in anxiety, depression and unhappiness we are seeing in our surveys.

In most areas, our surveys are recording self-harm rates of between 18 and 25% amongst 13-15 year olds. In one area, we saw that self-harm rates were an alarming 30%. Since we started asking the question four years ago, these numbers have been growing.

Mindful Me is the culmination of 12 months of pilots with industry experts to tackle this problem. It combines the best of Mindfulness with Industry-leading Fusion Life Coaching techniques, to give young people the tools they need to cope with pressures whilst taking back control of their futures. Our programmes are about prevention and intervention.

Mrs C Bendell, Barnsley Academy:

“The intervention itself helped pupils to develop strategies to better manage stress and pressure in their lives. The sessions were calming, interesting and thought provoking. I would highly recommend this intervention to all schools.”

We have seen some significant uplifts in mood, self-esteem and resilience. Just from the pilot, 52% of young people have told us that they are now continuing to use the techniques beyond the sessions we deliver. This is very encouraging.

Through their work with adults in the Ribble Valley, our practitioners have also seen some significant improvements in resilience, self-esteem, relationships and overall enjoyment of life. The self-reported figures below are before and after the six week Mindfulness and Therapeutic Life Coaching course, which we are now offering to both students and teachers.

Similar to our Social Norms programme, Social Sense has created a range of packages to make these Interventions accessible, affordable and easy to evaluate for local authorities and schools.

Our 3 core Mindful Me packages are:

• The One hour Mindful Me Mindfulness Sessions (MMMS) delivered to groups
• A range of Fusion courses, including: group sessions, 6 x one to one sessions, and both Student and Teacher Fusion Breakthrough Days
• The 8 week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Courses for students and teachers

For more information, or to discuss delivery of a programme within your area or school, please visit www.mindful-me.co.uk or call Jennifer on 0161 2145216.