Healthy connections with family, friends, and others are great for our mental health and well-being. And when our need for healthy connections isn’t met, we can sometimes feel isolated and lonely – which can have a negative impact on our mental health.
Children and young people from armed forces and veteran families are part of a very special community, which is full of many positive connections built upon a strong collective sense of belonging, lived experience, and solidarity.
Frequent opportunities to travel, absorb a range of cultures and meet a more diverse range of people can provide many healthy connections which develop a unique sense of identity, purpose, and confidence to their realise potential and thrive.
Sometimes, life in an armed forces and veteran communities can present unique challenges to finding the healthy connections needed by children and young people in order to realise their potential and thrive.
Things like deployment of loved ones, bereavement, living with a family member with life-changing physical or psychological wounds, regular relocations, and disrupted friendships and routines can have a negative impact on mental health and well-being.
That’s why we sourced funding from the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust to work directly with children and young people who connected with us to share their experiences to co-produce lots of different resources about mental health and well-being.
For #childrensmentalhealthweek (6-12 February 2023), we invite more children and young people from armed forces and veteran families to connect with Forces Children Scotland to check out our Your Mind Matters mental health and wellbeing resources.
Better still, we’d love to hear what children and young people think about our resources and suggest other things we could add to make sure we have covered all our bases when it comes to supporting this specific community.
Visit our Your Mind Matters Hub to check out our mental health and wellbeing resources.
Your Mind Matters Hub