YoungMinds

The New Year is here, and we want to take a moment to thank you for supporting us with your fundraising, and helping us achieve so much in 2025 – here's just some of what we’ve done:

Our young people’s Writers Programme 2025 published their ‘Becoming Me’ zine. This title represents how identity isn’t fixed and is always changing, with each piece capturing a part of this journey.

We joined forces with other mental health organisations to launch the Future Minds campaign, calling on the government to prioritise fixing the youth mental health crisis.

We trialed keeping our Parent’s Helpline hours open longer to allow more parents and carers to access help when they need it – people like Catherine: “When I first picked up the phone to the YoungMinds Parents Helpline, the person who answered was really supportive. She was so brilliant. She just almost understood our situation straight away”. And, thanks to your support for the Big Give, we can continue keeping the Helpline open longer for the next 12 months. 

YoungMinds Activists Matty and Dinah, and YoungMinds Ambassador Alfie Watts sat down for the latest episode of the What’s On YoungMinds? podcast, discussing exam stress and how the current system is failing students' mental health. 

We launched our Parent Panel, bringing together a diverse group of parents and carers who are helping us develop our services and policies, to better support families when young people are struggling.

New Ambassadors joined us to help spread our message even further, including Team GB diver Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix and Love Island’s Cach Mercer.

From young people to parents, supporters to ambassadors, we're coming together so no young person needs to face their struggles alone.

New research released  on Wednesday 5 February 2025 warns that the mental health crisis facing children and young people will prevent the Government from its mission of boosting economic growth and productivity as well as impacting the lives of thousands of young people. The research estimates that the long-term impact of mental health problems in childhood now costs the UK over £1 trillion in lifetime lost earnings.

The research is published as part of the launch of a new campaign bringing together four of the UK’s leading children and young people’s and mental health organisations – Centre for Mental Health, Centre for Young Lives, the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition, and YoungMinds, with the support of the Prudence Trust – which is urging the Government to deliver urgent reform and investment to boost children’s mental health services in its forthcoming Spending Review and 10 Year NHS Plan.

Find out more about the campaign on our website: https://www.youngminds.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/press-releases/future-minds-campaign-launches/.

Alfie Watts has become the latest Ambassador for YoungMinds, the UK’s leading charity for children and young people’s mental health.

The 21-year-old is no stranger to the pressures that young people face having struggled with his mental health after the loss of his mother at a young age. During this time, Alfie found school particularly hard until an opportunity to become a European football scout became available, something that he went onto love.

Working with YoungMinds, Alfie wants to speak directly to young men and show them that they are not alone with their mental health. Young men still face stigma with their mental health and he hopes that by sharing his journey, others will see that hope and help is out there.