Award winning online counselling for 11-25 year olds

Background : Young person was struggling with sleeping and dealing with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. She has a small child who was born whilst she was married in an abusive relationship. Relationship had been fine until she found herself pregnant. After this point, she was raped, locked in a room, physically and emotionally abused by her husband. She had received counselling as a result of this a couple of years ago and made many positive changes, both within the relationship and for herself. She attended college and university and felt she was doing really well. But recently fear and memories have been overwhelming her and having a huge impact on her life again. She has also had post natal depression and anorexia in the past. She worries if she does not address these feelings she will descend back into this black hole. Young person was finding it difficult to access counselling in her area without a long waiting list. Her feelings of fear and stress where starting to overwhelm her and impact on her sleep, relationship with family and work at uni. She was scared and worried that if this continued that she would no longer be able to cope and her depression and destructive ways of coping would come back. It was possible she would have found parenting difficult and also dropped out of university. Now : She is sleeping again now feels lots better generally. She has located those things that were adding to her stress and taken steps to deal with them. She has joined weight watchers to address her issues with her weight in a healthy way (previously would just stop eating) and is feeling less stressed with both uni and her mum. Has arranged some time away next week as a holiday to have some time to relax. She reports feeling strong and proud that she is dealing with things and continuing to grow and develop in positive ways. We continue to explore and encourage her to deal with her feelings and fears. She is able and very motivated to work out and make the changes she needs to, but sometimes just needs space to talk about her feelings.

Background : Self harming since the age of 11, co-inciding with the breakup of family. Low self esteem, very isolated and lonely. Living with Mum, rare contact with her her Dad. Relationship with Mum is very distant with very little communication between them both. Mum prefers her to be at home in the evenings and at weekends.
Low mood and negative self belief prevent her from socializing and instigating interaction with other young people.
Mood has deteriorated recently after beginning of year 12 in her college. Has had a period of reducing self harm, but this has escalated again. Now : She has explored her feelings around self harm, relationships and aspirations for the future. With the support offered to her from Kooth she has reduced her self harm by using distraction techniques such as reading and listening to music, using the site and writing her feelings down. She has formulated some clear goals regarding her desired career to be a teacher and to travel. At the beginning of year 12 she felt anxious and isolated but was able to challenge her negative thoughts and acknowledge them. She was proactive then for a short time in arranging some time out to go to the cinema with a friend, and to feel more positve about her peers.

Background : This 16 year old young man's girlfriend was pregnant. He said that she was in pain and bleeding a little. More than anything, he was 'terrified' of telling his mother. He said that his step father would be disappointed in him too. He and his girlfriend were happy about the pregnancy. We advised the young person to tell his girlfriend to visit her GP to check out the pain and bleeding. We explored his fear of telling his mother and looked at ways of telling her. We rehearsed what he might say. We considered the possibility of speaking to another close relative, such as a grandparent, who could act as a go-between. In order to do this enquiries were made about family relationships which ascertained that his father was absent and had left when he was a year old. His mother was 17 years old when she had him. His girlfriend was in care and his mother had spoken to her carers and were familiar with them. He was encouraged to return for further counselling. Now : There was no definite outcome, however, in looking at options, there was a possibility that this young person might find a way of telling his parents. This young person was given the opportunity to talk to someone in a safe and confidential space, in which he would not be judged. The advice for his girlfriend to visit her GP was important, not only because of any health risk to her and the baby, but also because it would lead to another professional becoming involved face to face and being able to advise them. If this young person had not used Kooth, his level of anxiety and desperation might have increased and he may have lost his ability to rationalise the situation.