Mental Health Awareness Week: A librarian's guide to big sad thoughts and other weird growing-up things
Growing up is weird and sometimes you might not feel ready to talk to your parents about some topics. So for Mental Health Awareness Week, we thought we’d share some useful resources for young people.
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week this week, from the 23rd-29th of September, and we are here not only to promote awareness of mental health, but to share ways you can learn more about helping yourself or others. Plus, MHAW have colouring sheets you can download.
The Mental Health Foundation has dedicated each day of this week to a different activity, with the aim of fostering wellbeing:
Manaaki Monday: Start the week off with an act of kindness.
Tautoko Tuesday: Tautoko a local independent business or community organisation.
Whānau Wednesday: Reach out to a friend or whānau member.
Tūhono Thursday: Make new connections in your community.
Whakawhetai Friday: Say thank you to someone in your community.
And remember, once Mental Health Awareness Week is over you can still try to prioritise these things in your life!
Now, life’s complicated, and as you grow older you notice this more and more. There are a bunch of things that you may want to know about that come with growing up. Your brain might not fit into the cookie-cutter picture of perfect mental health and may work in a way that others just don't get. You might think that some of the things you feel are weird or abnormal, but in reality this could be how a whole bunch of people feel. This could be in relation to mental health, queerness, or neurodivergence. Whoa, so much going on in a single brain!
But how can you untangle everything going on in your brain without knowledge? Sure, we live in the age of the internet where all humanity's development is available at the touch of a finger (slight hyperbole there), but that can be a lot of information to wade through and sometimes you might want more directed information. Or a book!
For us librarians, our job is to help you find what you want or need, not to judge and not to tell others. If you want to learn about something you're not yet ready to share with the people around you, we can help you get there.
Now here is a selection of some books that you may find helpful, or just interesting, to read. Please note that this is just a selection of books from our collection that are written for you, young adults.
If you need to talk to someone else:
Free call or text 1737 for support from a trained counsellor, or feel free to reach out to the below organisations:
Lifeline
0800 543 354
Free text 4357 (HELP)
Outline
0800 688 5463
Chat online from 6pm-9pm
Youthline
0800 376 633
Free text 234