What is mental health and psychosocial support?

So now we’re here with Dr. Ashley Nemiro, who’s going to start us off. Actually, what is mental health and psychosocial support? Mental health and psychosocial wellbeing is any support that promotes wellbeing and also responds to psychosocial needs. So that term psychosocial might be new to people and what it is, it’s the interplay between your psychological health and also your social health. So when we talk about social health, it’s really interpersonal relationships that you have in your life, such as family members, close friends within your community. And often times, for children, this is really peers that are in their life and then trusted adults. And when we are talking about psychological health, it’s really how you as an individual are feeling.

If you’re doing mentale well. There might be times where you’re experiencing distress and so that term psychosocial wellbeing really speaks to that interplay between psychological health and social health, which of course relates directly to mental health. So how does adult well being relate to the wellbeing of children? Through the wellbeing of adults is directly linked to the psychosocial wellbeing of children. And the interactions between adults and children is incredibly important for ensuring wellbeing. And actually research shows us that when adults are well, they have an easier time forming attachments with their children, also bonding with their children, having playful relationships with their children, and also showing children how they can manage their distress.

And when adults are in difficult situations, when there is distress in their life, of course that’s going to directly affect the children in their life and that makes it even more important to stay well, because you’re really teaching your child or the children in your life how to to cope better. It’s also important for adults to know the early warning signs of distress in their children, which is something that we’ll talk about a bit later. So we started thinking about this a little bit in the reflection question in Step 2. But what can we do to make the children around us feel emotionally well? There’s a lot that adults can do to ensure that children are emotionally well.

One of the first things is ensuring that the basic services that children access, such as school, community centers are safe and promote positive psychosocial wellbeing. And also that the relationships with their peers, with trusted adults, are promoting positive psychosocial wellbeing. Of course it’s important as a caregiver to do this, but children often engage with other adults in their life, whether it be teachers, educators at community centers and then of course, their peers. And Secondly, it’s really important that family’s support systems are in place. So if a child does experience distress, that they can get that support from their caregivers, from other trusted adults in their life.

And the last point is ensuring that their services that are available when children do need extra support. We’re going to talk about that later in the unit, how to access those services. And recognized when children do need them. Ashley, thank you so much. This is a great start. And I will see all of you in the next step.