Protecting Children's Mental Health

Mental illness can cause unimaginable unhappiness in children like Lily. It can make it hard for them to feel good about themselves. It can make it difficult to learn at school or find friends as they grow up. Importantly, it can affect the rest of their lives.

Did you know that half of all children who experience mental illness will go on to have mental health problems as adults too?

We are pioneering projects to help children like Lily who, through no fault of their own, are at high risk of developing a mental illness.

Lily’s mum, Dawn, struggles to give her daughter the emotional care she needs. Dawn wants to be a good mum but often feels inadequate and unable to cope. She gets angry and often struggles to meet Lily’s need for affection.

Through our work, trained support teams help parents like Dawn build stronger bonds with their children. They spend time with them in the vital early months, sharing practical ideas and techniques to help parents develop a closer connection with their children.

The seeds of good mental health are sown in the first three years of a child’s life – even during pregnancy itself. We can’t afford to wait until children like Lily are four or five years old, when it might be too late.

Please watch this video, in which Barbara McIntosh, Head of Children and Young Peoples Programmes at the Mental Health Foundation, talks about how protecting the mental health of children begins before birth.

We must act now.

We can only make a difference with your support. A donation today could start a ripple that changes the way vulnerable parents and children, like Dawn and Lily, are supported in this country.

We hate to think of children like Lily developing a preventable mental illness because they were not given the practical and emotional support they needed in their vital early years.

Please make a donation today so that fewer children like Lily have to experience the pain of mental illness as they grow up.