Mental Health

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Make (Good) Trouble’s mission is to help break down the barriers between teens and adults, to put paid to the myth that teenagers are just sullen, snowflakey beings that need to “grow up”, “pipe down” or “behave”.

A brand new book – out today – really chimes with our purpose. ‘Why Your Parents Are Driving You Up the Wall and What To Do About It’ is a brand new book written for teenagers by neuroscientist Dean Burnett. The book describes in glorious detail how the changes in the teenage brain fundamentally affect the relationship teens have with their parents. It looks into how parents’ fixed brains are befuddled by their teen’s seemingly risky, volatile, unthinking behaviour. It includes fantastic troubleshooting guides for teens to help with their parents’ inflexible demands – bringing understanding – and hopefully some sense of calm – on both sides. Want to know why your parents think “you treat this house like a hotel?” Dean Burnett explains. And yes, it’s the parents’ fault. 

“The truth is, you have always treated the house like a hotel, by assuming your parents will take care of all the housework. Because for your whole life thus far, they did!”

Dan Burnett: Why Your Parents Are Driving You Up the Wall and What to Do About It

It’s intelligently written – which is what you’d expect from a neuroscientist! – but as it’s aimed at teens (who start at 10 years old by the way). It’s refreshingly frank, warm, honest and funny and really does relate to all the realities of the parent-teen relationship. 

The book is particularly fascinating when it comes to descriptions of the brain and how it works, giving us a real insight into the teenage brain and how it impacts on everything from sleep, social media and school to family and mental health. 

Read this book if you’re a teenager. If you know a teen, do them a favour and buy them a copy.

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Raising Teens is back for a second series in Autumn 2019 with a further eight one hour shows covering the issues that are concerning parents today. Guy Lloyd will be back with us as host, and Lola, our roving teen reporter will be joined by new recruit Kya McCartney, 18.

We’ll be covering everything from alcohol and anger to self-harm and loneliness. Plus we’ll be re-visiting the fascinating subject of the teenage brain.

If you have a question or something to contribute, please leave a comment below.

Lola and Kya
Our Raising Teens teen reporters, Lola and Kya

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Once again mental health is on the front pages of the papers and it reminded me that our recently concluded radio series, Raising Teens, on BBC Sussex and BBC Surrey has highlighted the positive.

In episode after episode, the teenagers we spoke to showed themselves to be eloquent and possessing the language and knowledge to speak up about mental health. As one listener said of the teens featured in the show: “I love their optimism, their kindness and care.”

As our teen reporter, Lola, put it: “We will become more emotionally intelligent than past generations have ever been because we are able to express ourselves more openly and freely without shame or discouragement from our peers, adults or parents. I think we as a generation will become resilient because we are able to talk about [mental health] and communicate more openly.” 

BBC Sussex Raising Teens presenter Guy Lloyd and teen reporter Lola Ray
Raising Teens presenter Guy Lloyd and teen reporter Lola Ray

But it’s high time the rest of us caught up. The Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, this week reported on the postcode lottery affecting children most in need. In a scathing report Longfield writes:

“The Prime Minister today called for all teachers to be trained to spot emerging mental health conditions in kids – I don’t think they have that much trouble spotting them; they have trouble finding anyone to treat them. I have called for a long time for a CAMHS professional to be available in every school. Now, on the day we hear that teenagers in Liverpool are being paid £1,000 to stab other kids and the Government publicly recognises that one in ten kids with a social worker lurches in and out of the service for 4-5 years, the PM calls for a twiddle to teacher training?” 

This will just be heaping another responsibility on beleaguered teachers – today the OECD have published a report showing that teachers in England have longer working days than anywhere other than Japan. Here’s a thought – why not have teachers focus on what they do best: teach and inspire our children?

This week Action for Children reported on a huge decline in early years’ childcare and support saying that Sure Start centres were closing with a 62% cut in early years’ service spending since 2010. This means that those needing the most help are the least likely to get it, shoring up problems in later years. Couple that with what comes later – namely school stress and the relentless exam focus, it’s a ticking time bomb… We looked at school stress and what teens and parents can do to help in Raising Teens. You can listen to the episode on BBC Sounds.  

If you have listened to any of the shows, please let us know what you think in our very brief survey. Your feedback will help to shape our future projects – of which there are plenty in the pipeline (watch this space!) Thank you!

Raising Teens radio show on BBC Sussex and BBC Surrey made with Make (Good) Trouble CIC

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Mental Health Awareness week was celebrated across the UK – hurray. We witnessed some pretty spectacular things, not least the axing of The Jeremy Kyle show. Our management team all worked in TV prior to setting up Make (Good) Trouble and we wonder if this is the start of a media revolution, to create content with GOOD intention instead of this bear-baiting, revolting chase for ratings. Axe Love Island? We live in hope.

We are working flat out on our radio show Raising Teens. This week we heard teens, parents and experts talk about Relationships: friendship groups, access to porn, whether parents had the all-important ‘sex talk’ with their kids – they were all subjects under discussion. Our teen roving reporter, Lola, delivers candid, surprising and delightful interviews with her peers every week on various topics including resilience, sleep, school stress, body image and social media.. It really has been an amazing series and journey for us. As one listener said: “I loved yesterday’s show… it really struck a chord… What you are doing is desperately needed… I think your lifebelt thrown to a sea full of struggling parents and children will have many takers.”

If you have any feedback, please drop us a line here. It means a lot.

Raising Teens radio show: on stress, resilience and relationships

We have some amazing new work coming up, including a series of podcasts in partnership with Public Health and the Clinical Commissioning Group; a film about PTSD in women in the First World War and what that means to teenagers today; a project with Sussex Police (watch this space!); a set of parent talks through schools, given by our teens (we’re kicking off with a talk about device addiction and social media); and of course our Brighton5 films (I’ll write a post about the progress on that next week, promise).

Finally, I’ll be on our very last radio show of the series on Thursday 30 May, which is all about teen language. And on that note, as the young folk might say, tune in, stay woke, *cringe*.