Join us for a crucial discussion on youth mental health with Dr. Mark Rackley, a distinguished psychologist.

In this episode, we confront the rising tide of depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder among young adults aged 18 to 24. Dr. Rackley emphasizes the need for early intervention by parents and guardians and sheds light on the challenges facing university students, exacerbated by recent problems.

Learn about the transition from school to university and the importance of support systems during exam stress. Explore the pivotal role of therapeutic relationships and communication in mental health treatment, along with insights into gender dynamics within the field of psychology.

Discover how embracing vulnerability can lead to personal growth and resilience. Tune in for invaluable advice and practical strategies to support the psychological well-being of young adults.

--------- EPISODE CHAPTERS ---------

(0:00:00) - Youth Mental Health Trends

(0:03:26) - Mental Health Challenges in Universities

(0:17:08) - Building Therapeutic Relationships and Communication

(0:21:49) - Embracing Vulnerability for Growth

#YouthMentalHealth #DrMarkRackley #InsideAMindPodcast #PsychologicalWellbeing #UniversityLife #SupportSystems #MentalHealthAwareness #ExamStress #TherapeuticRelationships #GenderDynamics #Vulnerability #PersonalGrowth #Resilience #Parenting #Guardianship #EarlyIntervention #Psychology #StudentLife #WellnessWednesday #PodcastRecommendation

Does that mean you have to be very careful with medicating? I say a 13 year old boy or girl because their brains are still developing.

Will this medication help improve the quality of life of this person. But if you're not relatable, you're done.

Come sit in the room with me please, for my sake. We're going to move on to the next section. This is our favourite section. This is New News and this is all the new news in the mental health and wellbeing space that's coming out so we can keep you guys up to date with everything. The first one do you want to take us away?

Yeah, absolutely mate. So it sort of ties back to what we were saying earlier. So there'll be a lot of it we've already spoken about, but the Resolution Foundation launched a major report this week about the mental health crisis affecting young people in this country. It basically, essentially is saying one in three young people aged 18 to 24 have symptoms of depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, compared to one in four 20 years ago. I basically want to pick your brain as the one why you thought that was and what you can do to combat it, just from a sort of parent or point of view.

I would say mental health. I always think air on the side of caution If you think it's a problem and if you're noticing changes. So how we diagnose is we're looking at okay and it's very short actually, but what you're looking at is over a two week period. Are you seeing daily symptoms or daily changes where you're noticing that this person isn't maybe coping very well or this person is just displaying signs of poor mental health? So if you're seeing that, my advice is always don't wait, like don't go on wasting the GP time. Don't do that Like if it was a weird mole on your body, would you take it. Oh well, I'll just sit with that for two weeks and just hope for the best.

Go and speak to your GP, go and just get it checked, and just get it checked, and then you can either put your mind at rest, but I wouldn't like. If you're noticing that there is a continual problem here, then why is it to address it? 100%? That's amazing.

The second one we had was I'm sure you know, but university mental health week is coming up, which is next week.

And this was a shocking that. We'll discuss it, but it says this is something that caught my eye was the share of full time university students with a common mental health disorder has increased by 37% over the last 10 years, and it states that universities have become a hotbed for mental health problems. One in four students have a diagnosed mental health issue, 30% said their mental health has got worse at starting university and one in four students would not know where to go to get mental health support. University have asked about it. That's crazy because, having just gone through university, there are so many people struggling. I know Jodin goes to university, I did. There are so many people struggling there. It's crazy because you leave a support system of school. This is my point of view.

You leave a support system of school and then you go to university, where you go out ugly every night or you're in my case was playing rugby, so I'm up early for rugby and by the time I'm leaving at 6am to go to the gym, there's people stumbling in from a night out and then sleeping all day and then going to a lecture and not making new friends, especially after the pandemic. What's your sort of view on mental health in universities as a whole? Because for me, having lived it recently, like I was there last year it's horrendous and I actually think the stats are probably this is, from my point of view the stats are probably worse than it says there.

from my friends and stuff I don't know, anyone in my friendship group from uni who, deep down, wasn't struggling.

So you probably guys would know this. But back in Dublin when I qualified I worked in a uni as a psychologist so that was my job. For almost a year I worked for the DIT, which is one of the big, big unis in Dublin. So I was interested because I'd been in uni, obviously training, and then I ended up working in uni as a psychologist.

Being staff and we were, flat out. We were crazy, crazy, crazy busy in the uni. I worked in One of the things. If I just could be a tone podcast, really. If you think of an 18 year old leaving home to go to uni, especially if that's their first time, if they've not gone to boarding school or they've just gone to the local comprehensive, then that's a big transition.

That's a massive transition, underrated yeah.

For, like basically a teenager, that you're sending them to live in another part of the country on their own. I know they'd be in student halls, but they're still. You're basically saying, go and survive, and maybe they've had no education around what that's going to be like. There's almost like an expectation that these are going to be the best years of your life, and of course they can be, but not if you're maybe a more person that isn't ready for that transition, and that transition can be massive for lots of young people, but also uni can be very lonely.

It's very lonely, very, and so I might.

Last episode of my podcast is on loneliness and I talk about this that, like there's one study done that you would, you would think that more older people struggle with loneliness and in one particular study they did, it was um the highest rates are in teenagers.

That's not how it should be.

Yeah, doesn't make sense because, like the teenagers, but again, it's a lack of connection. So so the other piece of that, of course, is that what the uni I worked in. We were so visible so Everybody knew who I was and the department I worked in. We had the open days around mental health. I'm all the. All the heads of the departments Knew me so if there was anybody in the class that they were worried about or that they were, so we're showing signs of saying maybe not doing so well, they were flagged the students union flag. So we had a pretty robust system in place In the uni I worked in. It was really good. I mean we had a good team of psychologists. It was great. But my experience of working here, I see lots of Student are so patients who are students and it's a real mix back when it comes to the services that are available but also the quality of those services.

I was. The other thing I was gonna say is like there's a difference between having people there and actually people who Can do a good job and help you. Yeah, that's, that's funny. You said that I was gonna say. The last thing I was thinking, as well when we were talking was exam stress. Yeah a levels GCC, not just at university, but the exam stress you have at university to perform.

Yeah you know, for a degree, is ridiculous, and that's when everyone's Mental health, like it, was visible to me. I feel like I read rooms Incredibly well. I read people well. I read their emotions. I can tell when people are going wrong and it was always exam season, even for me. I struggle massively in exam season because I didn't know how I was gonna do. I ended up doing very well and I worked really hard. If You're, a lot of our Demographic people watching this are 18 to 24 year olds who are at uni and a lot of them will be sitting there exam soon, I think.

Yeah, a lot of them will have finals soon, yeah, what advice would you give them for their exams on how to better deal with their? Mental health and sort of reduce that stress level if possible. Just a few like nuggets of advice that you give to them to do better with that perfect.

So the thing first of all to normalize. Stress is a normal part of life and the brain is built to take stress.

Hmm.

If it wasn't built to take stress, we wouldn't cope with even very small things. So the problem you have with stress is when the Stress becomes elevated and then the stress then can tip into worry and anxiety. So that's different. So stress is some normal Physical response to we're doing something challenging or something that that's maybe demanding of us. Now, when where stress becomes a an actual problem is when the challenge in front of you and and the resources that you think you have to meet that challenge don't match right. Okay, so where we get really, really stressed is when we feel under resourced. So, for example, if I'm studying from my finals and I think got everyone out of time and I I've left it all too late, now my stress levels are gonna go through the roof because I can't create more time.

Yeah, so it's sort of preparing, knowing that's gonna happen Absolutely this is it, this is like it, this is it does an endpoint here. But the other piece around the resources is resources around again, the practical things like getting enough sleep, making sure that you, you know what you're doing with your study, that's it's always Quality over quantity. Always you just need to do the quality work, mm-hmm. And then the other piece of that also is making sure that you are supportive. So if you're struggling with your mental health, that you need people to kind of step in and support you get this support. So there your resources and those resources will help to alleviate your stress. But if you're not facing the stress head on off, you go in to say avoidance or procrastination, then that will just facilitate your stress and your stress is going to go higher.

And higher, and that's when it tips into anxiety.

Would you recommend CBT therapy for people who are struggling with exam stress or not really?

Yeah, that can be helpful, I think, if you're really kind of struggling with it. The things I think you know mostly for exam stress is Make sure you get enough sleep, like do some exercise. All that stuff is great for de-stressing, but you're the main piece. That is, recognize the task, like understand what the task is, because the task is what we call it. That's your stressor. So you need to understand what is the stressor and then, in order for me, then you've got to understand what do I need to do to be able to actually manage and deal with that stressor?

Because what lots of people with stress do is they just room with the feeling and the feeling is, oh, I feel stressed and like, well, okay, yeah, we know that, but like, what's the source of the stress? And then you break it down. Right, how are you relating to this? So what is it about this particular thing that you feel overwhelmed by? So you break it down, break it down, break it down, break it down, and then you figure out a plan and okay, well, if we're going to approach it, then what do we need to do to help you to approach it and to manage it?

God, I love this podcast sometimes it's so nice when you just have someone on who's just like, you learn so much. That's the one thing I found from this podcast is I have learned so much about mental health. It's so nice to discuss.

I hope we know what we're talking about.

Yeah, I'm just, he's not actually. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The next.

Far as go here, do anything.

The CBT side of things. I was just doing some reading the other day and we ended up speaking about it, and there's a sort of new controversial mental health book that's come out by Abigail Schreer. Have you heard of it?

No, I told you I was going to say Jordan Peterson. I was like not again, not that guy, not that guy, it's called a bad therapy why the kids aren't growing up.

I'll read a tiny bit about it. It says it argues that most therapeutic approaches have serious side effects and few benefits, and she is highly critical of many mental health professionals. She asked an important question If therapy is effective, why is the huge increase in spending on mental health treatment for Gen Z not resulted in less depression? But interestingly, in this book, which she is very critical about everything in the mental health industry, she views CBT as the exception, which she admits is evidence-based and helps people change their views on how they react to situations, which I thought was super interesting Because I think CBT is amazing.

That was just from my point of view. But she also says she's highly critical of everything else. But you did psychotherapy, didn't you? Which he said was amazing. So I wasn't too sure on that when I read it. What's your overall view so far? Because it works so well for him and CBT was amazing for me.

Yeah.

I've gone on to this from my own training and perspective. So as in my clinical work, how I work, when I trained, I was trained in CBT, like I was lots of psychologist, but I was also trained in other models of treatment I was also. We did a lot of training around human development and so really looking at the holistic view of the person. So also things like what we know from brain development is that the biggest influence of brain development is not genetics, it's the environment.

So you have to look at the environment. You've got to look at what did this person land into. You've got to ask about the parenting what kind of parenting did you get? And then you bring in all kinds of things like you look at attachment styles, personalities, you look at trauma that the person's been through, and so you're building a massive picture of this psychological makeup of this person. And once you have that, then you can start to think about okay, what does this person need? So I never go into a case thinking right, I don't know how many cases of depression I've treated Probably thousands at this stage in my career but I never go in thinking I know how to treat your depression Because I don't know what your depression is Because everyone's different.

That's so interesting In the same way that you and I play rugby and don't like running that much you love running, it's just like a one size fits all for everyone.

It can't be, and that's the kind of thing with CBT. Cbt has its place and I'm not knocking it. I really am knocking it. Some of my patients have responded really well to it. Some of them come in and say don't do that with me, I don't want to.

Doesn't suit them yeah.

And I think, where it's like. It's like any form of psychological treatment. You've got to figure out where the patient is in terms of what they need, but also you've got to get to know them, to think about, okay, what kind of treatment might suit this patient. So, for me, how I approach it is we know that the brain is like your fingerprint. It's unique and the reason it's unique is because of the network, so the neural pathways are wired uniquely in every single person's brain. So you can't approach a case thinking that all I've seen this before, yeah, you might have treated the disorder before. Chances are like I, certainly in my case. I don't treat anything I haven't treated before now. So I kind of I know what I'm doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I don't know what's going on in that brain.

I don't know how you do it. I know you've studied it and you've done it for years, but every person is just so different. Like a bus, just be you find you still find it confusing, or is it kind of just like you just know?

Sometimes I'm like.

But I think that's good.

We're gonna take our time with this because some of the cases are really complex.

I'm fascinated by the process in which you find out what works best for that person. So how long does that process take? From meeting, say, I'm your client now, yeah, how long does it take for you to? I guess it's different for the person as well. Would it take days, weeks, months to decide this is going to work best for you based on your environmental, chemical makeup? How does that work?

So I tend to give myself probably a window of about Four weeks where I say to the patient right, we're just going to understand the story, we're going to try and build a picture of your life, and then I'm going to give you some feedback In terms of what I think we need to address here. So it's really collaborative, because although I'm the Psychologist in the room, I'm not the expert.

The expert is the patient.

Because they're the expert on them yeah so you very much are guided by them. Now, of course, you ask these certain types of questions. You're leading the conversation to try and get the information you need, but you're very much guided by the patient You've got to be, because if you don't get the story and if you and if you and I think this just comes with time of doing the job Like you'll often get kind of your spidey senses.

I kind of think they are where you'll hear something, or something will be said in a kind of a non-verbal communication and you'll clock it, and the patient might not even realize that, oh, that's maybe something quite significant, or that that could be something that needs to be addressed, but you'll clock it.

Do you find that's a skill that you've got, though, because I'm sure there are people in your field who might miss those Visual cues purely because they're they're a brain? And they they get the science behind it but actually the human that's sitting opposite you. You might miss on those things. Is that a skill that you've got?

I can't, I think yeah.

I'd like to think they all have it, because I think you, when you do the job, you've got to open up the space. Yeah, you've got to open it up, so you can't go in with a foregone kind of idea in your head and also like You're building a relationship with the person and and all the research will tell you like, and going on to what you were saying, tom, earlier about that book, but if you look there's a big book I read when I was training. It's a big yellow book.

I'll never forget it because it was not yellow pages, it was interesting.

And it was called what works on therapy. Okay, big, big and it's a big book on. Basically, they did it's all the research around. Okay, what is it that? That gets the the change? And every single time, what it came down to it's the relationship between the patient and the psychologist. That is it. Okay, so you can be the most skilled guy or girl going in terms of your training, but if you're not relatable and the patients can't form a therapeutic relationship with you, you're done. That's exactly. It's funny, isn't it? Because when I came on.

That's amazing. When I came on to talk to Tom on sort of our first episode we did when I was a guest, I spoke about how I saw I think it was three therapists before I met the right one.

Yeah.

And it was like I just didn't have a connection with that person. And person number one and two were amazing and they could work best for Tom or yourself. I just couldn't warm to them, I couldn't open myself up because to be that vulnerable and open up yourself to that person. You have to form a relationship with them. So, fourth time, lucky for me and it was great. But it's hard to share with people you don't click with.

I think that's what we yeah, it's such an underrated skill that you have is you're a very likable guy. As soon as you walked in the room, usually we knew like it was going to be a good podcast and I think when you walk into a room with a therapist, you know if you're going to click with them. You know, like exactly what you said there. I had two, so it was like I knew as soon as I walked through a door. I was quite lucky, I was like okay.

I can. I can click with this person.

It took me about two sessions to actually talk about something. I just sat there in silence the first one Looking back at it Because it's a really vulnerable space. It's such a vulnerable thing.

Like you're walking into some strange doctor's office and all of a sudden you're going to get deeply personal, like that's not the real world.

Yeah.

And also to just assume that that's the way it's going to go. Like you got, you got to get the patient on board, like you have to build that trust in order for the patient to let themselves be vulnerable. But if they're feeling that they, they, they maybe can't connect with, they're going to be guarded and then the essentially the treatment is over before it's begun Because they're not going to open up.

Yeah, I wanted to ask you as well do you find men react differently to women in terms of therapy?

It's funny you said that because so traditionally and I don't know why this is I'm sure there's a study done on it but traditionally in psychology it is female heavy, right? So you, when I was training back in Dublin, there was, I think there was, 19 people in my class and we had, I think there was, six lads, so and that's kind of the case where it's it's definitely more female heavy. I don't know why that is.

Hopefully that changes soon.

I would like to think. I think it is.

I think a lot of men are being more open, like us.

Yeah.

About our problems and stuff. That I think it's not very nice thing to do and I think you have to swallow a lot of pride in a way. From my point of view, If you are a guy doing that and I think a lot of people just don't want to. I didn't want to. When I look back at it, I really didn't want to go that I just didn't have a choice, because I was in such a bad way.

Whereas now, now, having done it, if I could go back to that stage and tell 15, 16 years old, when I was at the worst.

I'd be like make just go, like, trust me, the best thing you do. I do think the girls tend to exam better than guys. It's quite a tough, rigorous process to be able to exam for, isn't it?

I think it's a sort of the yeah, so the you got to do your psychology degree and then you got to do your training and I don't know, but like it's, it's still very female heavy and it's been a male psychologist, because there's way more female psychologists than male psychologists out there. And some of the and they'll tell me so some of the maybe the guys I see, unless they're the teenagers, are there because their parents need them to be seen or the doctors send them. But certainly some of the men I see they will often say to me I want to see a guy Interesting.

And I've also had a very interesting opposite, where I've had women say to me I have to say the initial consultation that I think I need to see a woman because that'd be trauma with the relationship they've had with a man. It could be, but also relatability or not, it can sometimes even be that they don't if there is some trauma in their past that being on your own in a room with a man.

Absolutely.

That can be really tricky yeah absolutely I can imagine, that's awesome.

I'm gonna I'm gonna end it on this and it's a question. We're gonna try and start to the end of all our podcasts now because I think it's so powerful and it's in reflecting on our conversation today and considering all your experiences you've gone through personally, professionally what is one piece of advice you wish you could give to anyone out there, listening or watching, regardless of where they are in their journey, that you believe can make the most significant difference in their life?

It is human to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is not something to be scared of and it's not something that you should try and run away from. Vulnerability is what it is to be an imperfect person. So if you're feeling vulnerable, don't try to fight that vulnerability, but actually deal with the vulnerability. I think vulnerability as a feeling, of course, it doesn't feel nice, it feels frightening. We feel very scared when we're vulnerable. But my advice would be lean into the vulnerability, like work with it and let other people then support you when you're feeling vulnerable, because, although it's not pleasant, but the opportunity for growth out of vulnerability is massive, really massive, because you learn resilience, you learn what it is to endure things, your confidence grows, your ability to be able to take risks grows when you allow yourself to be vulnerable. But if you don't lean into the vulnerability, then you are at a high risk of having very poor mental health. But also, you don't learn, you don't get the skills that come out of vulnerability.

That's amazing, Awesome, bro. Thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate it.