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Welcome to Week 5

Watch Professor Shirley Reynolds introduce us to Week 5 of 'Understanding Depression and Low Mood in Young People'.
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Hello, welcome to Week 5. In this Week, we’re going to really think about difficulties around communicating with young people when they’re depressed. And we’ll look at a variety of difficulties that you can have when trying to talk to somebody, to support people and the misunderstandings that can frequently occur when young people simply hear something you didn’t mean to say. This Week, we’ll also look at strategies for helping young people stay well. Once they’ve recovered from depression or low mood, what can we do to things around them to keep them well and to stop them relapsing in the future? It can be difficult to live or work with young people who’ve got depression.
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So one of the things we want to focus on this Week is really how to look after yourself as well. So we take the strategy that if you’re not well, if you don’t feel OK, you’re not going to be as much help to the young person as you could be. So we put a lot of emphasis on you looking after yourself first. We’re aware that when you do an online course like this, you’ll have more questions than we can probably answer– and I’m sorry about that - but I hope that what you’ll find is the online discussions with other learners have been helpful.
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And we’re also providing a very extensive list of resources, of books, and online resources, and all sorts of other things that you can use. And I hope that those will answer most, if not all, of your questions.

We really hope that you’ve found the course interesting, enjoyable and helpful so far.

This is the last week of the course and we’ll be focusing on family communication and stress, and the importance of looking after yourself when helping a young person with depression. We’ll also be talking about problem solving strategies, dealing with setbacks, planning for the future and finding ways of getting more help if you need it.

But first, how did you get on with the homework exercise and reflection point from Week 4? We’ll ask you to share your thoughts in the next Step.

Course tip

Don’t forget that between 16 November and 18 December, Dr Michelle Lee and your course mentors, Laura and Will, will be supporting the course discussions. Click on the link in their profile to follow them.

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Understanding Depression and Low Mood in Young People

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