Inside the mental health epidemic among teenage girls

STEER have recently been mentioned in an article by The New Statesman about the mental health epidemic among teenage girls

Picture the scene: a school in west London. A wood-panelled hall, around 80 girls aged 14 to 15 assembled on tiered seating, a sea of ponytails, backpacks and tracksuit bottoms. How many of them have suffered from any kind of mental health problem, I ask, as part of a workshop I’m running on psychological wellbeing. Almost every hand shoots up.

It has been the same story whenever I have given talks at schools over the past two years as a mental health advocate and ambassador for several charities. Girls are struggling. It is young women who confide in me at the end of the workshops, when most of their male peers have left the room. They tell me that they suffer low self-esteem, feel that things are out of control, worry about their body image or are concerned about passing exams. Often they tell me that they haven’t been able to talk about any of these issues openly.

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