Silent Struggles : A young person’s perspective on Mental Health Awareness Week

We live in a world where everyone always seems okay. On social media, people post the best parts of their lives, like their achievements, friendships, perfect photos, funny moments and after a while, it becomes easy to believe that everyone else is coping better than you are.

That’s one reason why this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week theme, “Action: for yourself, for someone else, for all of us,” feels so important to me. As a young person in 2026, I think awareness alone is no longer enough. People know mental health matters, but too many young people still struggle silently because they feel isolated, judged, or scared to open up. That’s why we need to move beyond focusing on acknowledging mental health and make a more conscious effort to build and provide the space for young people to discuss their problems, free from judgement.

Not all mental health struggles are visible

A young person can sit in a classroom full of people, laugh at the right moments, hand in homework on time, and still feel completely alone inside their own mind. From the outside, nobody notices anything is wrong because struggling does not always look dramatic; sometimes it looks like exhaustion, silence, anger, anxiety, or simply pretending to be okay.

I think a lot of young people grow up believing everyone else is coping better than they are. Social media, school pressure, family expectations, and comparison culture make it easy to feel like you are falling behind emotionally while everyone else keeps moving forward.

I would compare it to looking at a block of flats. From the outside, everything seems calm. Some windows glow with warm light. Some balconies have flowers. You can imagine laughter, families eating dinner together, and people relaxing after long days. The building looks peaceful, almost perfect. But, behind one window might be a young person struggling with anxiety — hiding it from everyone around them. Behind another could be someone dealing with grief, pressure at home, loneliness, poverty, racism, sexism, violence, or fear about what tomorrow looks like. We only see what people allow us to see, while thoughts, fears, and struggles stay hidden.

Young people struggling with their mental health need to know they don’t have to face it alone.

Creating space to support young people’s mental health struggles

Sometimes making a big impact doesn’t require one huge, dramatic moment, but a small act: a teacher checking in with a student, a friend asking, “Are you actually okay, like really okay?”, or a candid classroom conversation where people stop joking about mental health and speak honestly.

When young people are given safe spaces to talk, the illusion that everyone else is fine starts to break apart. The young people labelled as ‘difficult’, ‘problematic,’ or ‘angry’ may be overwhelmed, unsupported, unheard, or carrying burdens adults never fully see.  

To me, that says something deeper about the world young people are growing up in. So many young people are looking for someone who will listen without judgement.

That is why we need action before somebody reaches their breaking point. This means:  

• Investing in schools’ mental health support before students fall through the cracks.
• Young people having trusted adults who listen.
• Policymakers funding accessible mental health services to prevent overstretching staff and services.
• Recognising how poverty, racism, violence, discrimination, and inequality shape young people’s wellbeing long before they ever ask for help.
• Young people checking in on each other genuinely, not just asking “you okay?” out of habit before moving on.

There is hope

The Youth Endowment Fund’s research shows how deeply mental health, isolation, and experiences of violence are connected, but it also shows why support, early intervention, and understanding matter so much. Young people are not problems waiting to happen – they are people shaped by the environments around them, the support they receive, and whether anybody takes the time to truly see them.

So, this Mental Health Awareness Week, we need action.

It is easy to focus only on the crisis, the loneliness, the silence, the violence, and the growing number of young people struggling behind closed doors, but let’s choose to act instead of ignoring. Let’s create safe spaces in schools for young people to open up before reaching breaking point, support communities disrupted by pain, fear, and instability, and let young people know they don’t have to face mental health struggles alone.