{"id":214690,"date":"2025-10-15T11:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/214690\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T11:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:28:09","slug":"staffordshire-teens-create-app-to-tackle-mental-health-stigma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/214690\/","title":{"rendered":"Staffordshire teens create app to tackle mental health stigma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ethan Saundersin Blythe Bridge<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760360710_614_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hagXkB hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/7cda2090-a916-11f0-85e5-b7e4f930730c.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"eager\" alt=\"BBC Six teenage girls in black school uniforms which have a blue and white crest in all smiling and looking at the camera.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 bGQwLJ\"\/>BBC<\/p>\n<p>The team of six who came up with the idea for Mindful Mondays are: Sophie Hodgkinson, Anneliese Costain, Tilly Hyatt, Lucie Woodworth, Paris Bell and Lydia Booth<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">A group of students are having an app developed to help break down the barriers around mental health for young people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">It comes after the teenagers, from Blythe Bridge High School in the Staffordshire Moorlands, won a competition put on by suicide prevention charity the Oli Leigh Trust.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Their app, Mindful Mondays, hopes to break down the barriers that young people face around their mental health.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Sophie Hodgkinson, who is 15 and one of the female students behind the idea, said: &#8220;A lot of people struggle with it silently and don&#8217;t feel like it&#8217;s ok to talk about it. There&#8217;s a lot of negative stigma around it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Tilly Hyatt, also in the team of six, felt it was better the idea came from young people as adults might not fully understand the pressures facing teenagers. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">She said: &#8220;We know what causes the stress and how to help it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The app hopes to offer a safe space for students to talk anonymously about their mental health, while also giving them challenges to help improve it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;It will build towards having the positive foundation, so people can be happier, focus better in school and help in small increments to have better mental health in the future,&#8221; said Anneliese Costain, another member of the team.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760360710_614_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hagXkB hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0b80eac0-a919-11f0-85e5-b7e4f930730c.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"A man with short brown hair, in a grey suit with a black tie and waistcoat.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 bGQwLJ\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Kristopher Knight teaches at the school and helped bring the Oli Leigh Trust project to the school as part of the PSHE curriculum <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Kristopher Knight teaches science at the school and feels issues with mental health are one of the biggest problems facing schools.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">He said: &#8220;We are seeing students not attending lessons and a lot of this is about a lack of provisions in and out of schools, because of external factors such as funding.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;We are not professionals [when it comes to mental health], we are there to support students but our main priority is being in the classroom to teach them,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Asked about what he thought of the idea the girls had come up, with Mr Knight said he was proud of what they had achieved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;Any support we can throw out to our students, and any small things they can do themselves or talk to parents about can only be a positive thing,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t think of anything better to champion than young people&#8217;s mental health.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ethan Saundersin Blythe Bridge BBC The team of six who came up with the idea for Mindful Mondays&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-214690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}