Youth Mental Health Day: behavioural change first signs a young person is struggling

Parents Urged To Watch For Behaviour Changes Ahead Of Youth Mental Health Day (18th September)

Youth Mental Health Day takes place on Friday 18th September. For Tim Panagos, Clinical Lead at The Edge, a residential programme in Crete for men aged 18 to 29, one of the most important things for parents to understand is that young people don’t always explain those worries directly. Often, their behaviour changes first and it’s crucial to spot the earliest signs that a young person may be struggling.

New figures underscore the urgency of early attention and support. Between January and March 2026, an estimated 1,012,000 young people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment, or training, equivalent to 13.5% of that age group and up 89,000 year on year.1 This highlights both the scale of the challenge and the need for targeted interventions that address mental health concerns.

Anxiety doesn’t always look like anxiety

One of the problems for parents is that distress in young people can be surprisingly ordinary-looking. A son who stops going out might simply be tired. Someone who sleeps until midday might be catching up after a busy week. An irritable teenager might just be, well, a teenager. Sometimes those explanations are exactly right. It is the pattern that matters.

Things to watch for include:

• Pulling away from friends, family or activities they previously enjoyed
• Major changes in sleep
• Irritability or anger that seems out of proportion
• Missing more school or college than usual
• Persistent headaches, stomach aches or fatigue
• Changes in appetite or eating habits
• Becoming unusually secretive about phones, money or whereabouts
• A friendship group changing suddenly
• Spending much more time alone

So, what do our young people worry about most?

Adults tend to assume the answer is exams. It is part of it, but it is rarely the top of the list when you ask young people directly.

• Money and the shape of the future. Nearly half of young people cite economic uncertainty as a source of hopelessness.2 This is not vague pessimism. It is a specific worry about whether the ordinary markers of an adult life are available to them at all.
• Being measured against everyone, constantly. A third of children aged 8 to 17 who use social media feel pressure to be popular all or most of the time, and 70% feel it at least sometimes.4
• Academic pressure, but as identity. For many, results are not experienced as an assessment of work done, but as a verdict on who they are.
• Belonging. Not having a place, a group, or a role. This is the one young people raise most often and the one adults ask about least.
• Their own screen use. 37% of 8 to 17 year olds think they spend too much time on screens, rising to 44% of 16 to 17 year olds and 56% among those with a mental health condition.4 Young people are usually ahead of their parents on this, not behind.

NHS England research found that between 85% and 96% of young people aged 8 to 23 with a mental health condition experienced regular sleep disruption.3 Young people with probable mental health conditions were also much more likely to miss substantial amounts of school.3 One bad week doesn’t tell you very much. A pattern that continues for several weeks is different.

Tim Panagos comments: “When we ask young men what they are frightened of, they very rarely say exams. They say that they will not make it, and that everyone can see it”.

Practical tips for parents

• Fix the wake time before anything else. Not the job hunt, not the conversation about the future. One consistent time out of bed, seven days a week. Almost everything else is downstream of this.
• Replace the job search with a weekly commitment. Something that happens at a fixed hour and where somebody notices if he is not there: a team, a class, a shift, a volunteering slot. Being missed is the active ingredient.
• Give a role with real consequences. Not a chore. Something that other people depend on, where doing it badly matters. Purpose is not a feeling you talk someone into; it is a by-product of being genuinely needed.
• Watch for the drift, not the incident. One heavy night is not the signal. A slow change in who he sees, how he sleeps, where his money goes and what he is no longer interested in is the signal.
• Separate rest from withdrawal. A young person recovering from a hard year needs rest. A young person who has declined every invitation for six weeks is not resting.
• Do not make your warmth conditional on his productivity. If affection arrives only alongside progress updates, he will start avoiding you to avoid the update. You will lose the visibility you need.
• Ask for advice before you are in crisis. Most services, ours included, will talk to a parent who is worried but not yet certain. That conversation is far more useful at that stage than after an emergency.

About The Edge

• The Edge is a residential programme in mountainous Crete for men aged 18 to 29, combining triathlon conditioning, cycling and swimming skill acquisition, wilderness challenge and evidence-based psychotherapy including CBT, DBT, and trauma-therapy, delivered in a high impact environment designed for privacy and resilience.
• The Edge is part of The Cabin Group. The Cabin is Asia’s most respected and established rehab. Located in the foothills of Chiang Mai, Thailand, its clinical team has more than 50 years’ combined experience and has successfully treated over 7,000 inpatients from around the world.