Healing young minds
By Ewan Sargent, Christchurch City Mission Communications Advisor
The middle-aged woman was alone in a car parked outside the locked gates at the Christchurch City Mission one cold Sunday morning when I arrived to drop off some things from home for the Op Shop. When she saw me approach the gate she jumped out and ran up asking “do you work here?”
Her car had blankets piled up on the back seat as if someone had slept there and her eyes showed she had been crying. Her voice sounded like she was about to cry again soon. As the chilly wind flicked around us, the woman straightened herself and carefully said, “My son needs rehabilitation”. “He’s not good … he needs rehabilitation, I just want …,” she looked overwhelmed as she tried to explain.
A nightmare had swallowed her family. She didn’t need apps or posters or slogans, she needed a real person to look into the eyes of her son and help him overcome his mental illness and the drugs (alcohol is a drug) he was taking to escape.
Let’s call her Megan. I know if Megan rang our after-hours number and if her son wanted to be helped, then he would come under the care of one of the wonderful youth counsellors I work alongside at the City Mission.
He is just one of hundreds of young people who come to us over a year. We have three full time youth mental health and addiction counsellors and from July 2021 to June 2022 they
worked with 432 young people (aged 13-24). That included 222 new cases. In August alone we had 33 new referrals.
Abigail, pictured above, is one of our three full time youth counsellors at the Christchurch City Mission who specialise in working with our young people aged 13 to 24.
HEADS DOWN, HOODIES UP
These young people come quietly to our reception area, heads down, hoodies up, some in school uniforms, and then they slip inside our building to our rooms where our youth service counsellors help them find that elusive path back to health.
You will have heard of the epidemic of mental health illness sweeping over our young people in Christchurch. It is very real and it is tearing lives and families apart. Here on the frontline we see the effects every day and past studies have suggested that typically someone with mental health/ addiction problems can severely impact the lives of six others – family, workmates and friends.
But here at the City Mission we are rolling up our sleeves and doing something about it. We help because it’s what we do when we see a crisis in our community.
SAVING YOUNG LIVES
We also know that if left untreated some will take their lives. That’s the blunt truth. We are saving lives. Others will become our future Foodbank and homeless shelter clients. We are catching them before they fall too far and we are also supporting their family and friends.
Of course everything we do is free and youth come to us through many different ways, including a worried mum waiting outside our gates on a cold Sunday morning.
We get referrals from parents and other family members, along with the Manu Ka Rere youth triage and treatment service, the Alcohol and Other Drugs Central Service, medical centres, high school guidance counsellors and other health professionals. Their problems can be mental health alone, or addiction alone, but these illnesses usually walk hand-in-hand.
Brian, one of our experienced counsellors who has been with us for a decade, says often those with serious mental health problems have addiction issues and nearly all young people misusing alcohol and drugs have mental health issues.
It’s hard to treat one without the other because they feed off each other and affect each other. Often an addiction is actually masking symptoms of anxiety and depression and it can also be a way to cope with past abuse and trauma, which create their own mental health issues.
TREATMENT THAT WORKS
Brian and our other youth counsellors use a range of therapeutic interventions including cognitive behavioural therapy, motivational interviewing, and relaxation techniques to help young people focus on holistic wellness – such as good living patterns, sleep, eating, relaxation.
It might sound touchy-feely and not have enough “pull yourself together” about it but they say it works. Healthy living patterns can be a powerful way to guide the mind back to healthy thinking and good decisions.
But here’s another secret to why our hands-on approach works and perhaps why Megan instinctively knew her son needed to see someone.
Brian believes 80% of the success of treatment comes from the therapeutic relationship between a counsellor and a young client. This is the process of building trust and talking through the problems.
“When they come to us we listen really well,” he says in his quiet voice. “Often they’re not used to being listened to…so to actually be really listened to is a powerful thing with a big impact.
It has been said that the most important factor in any drug and alcohol therapy relationship is the client trusts that the counsellor believes they can get well. In a way it is about us giving them hope.
WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE SAY
Many of the depressed, anxious young Christchurch people who come to our counselling rooms talk about existential issues, such as: Why am I here? What’s the purpose of life? Is the world stuffed?
It weighs on them to the extent that it becomes a mental health issue, and it drains them of hope and resilience.
Most youth addiction problems begin with experimenting with cannabis or alcohol, and it spirals downhill from there. If older people are puzzled at the impact of cannabis on today’s young people, they probably don’t realise that because of plant breeding, cannabis can now be 75% stronger than it was in the 1960s.
Right here in Christchurch young people are being damaged by taking synthetic cannabis, alcohol, cannabis, methamphetamine, mushrooms, ketamine and MDMA party drugs. Many become addicted to multiple drugs.
But I can tell you some good news. It is easier to help young people through addiction problems than adults. Their minds are still developing up to the age of 25 and Brian says it is easier to plant seeds of change. The overuse problems will be less entrenched than those in an adult who arrives with a long history of misuse problems.
Other good reasons to treat them when young are if left untreated into adulthood they will have a more severe addiction later, their death rate from addiction will be higher, and they will be more likely to be addicted to multiple drugs.
Every case is individual but generally our youth counsellors take a harm reduction approach to drug misuse and addiction.
LESS IS MORE WITH TEENS
Instead of telling a teen he or she must stop using cannabis because it will mess up their future, we talk about lowering the drug use to a safer level. This is us accepting that young people are going to use things because it is the curiosity stage of life.
Of course we say it would be great if they stopped. But if they can’t, then less is good. And guess what, harm reduction leads to them quitting drugs because as they use less and less, they think, ‘well, do I really need this stuff anymore?’
We have seen so many young people that our counsellors can pick a typical pattern of recovery.
Megan’s son will see us for a few sessions and things will start to improve. He will get overconfident he can manage things and will stop coming. He will slip back into harmful patterns, he will remember the City Mission can help and he trusts our counsellor. In a few months he will come back and start again and this time complete the journey to wellness.
Wellness. Happiness. Confidence. We all want those things for our young people in Christchurch and despite the frightening numbers this is a good news story.
We are stepping up. We are getting stuck in and we might be 93-years-old, but we are meeting young people on their terms and in ways they understand and trust to help them live good lives.
Megan came to the right place.