Stop.Breathe.Think – an innovative online mental health service for young people launched by charity CEO Dan Charlish during lock-down – has completed a pilot scheme in London’s Elephant and Castle. Funded by Delancey Real Estate and the Elephant and Castle town centre project team, the scheme has to date provided 46 vulnerable young people in the area through 1:1 completely free counselling sessions and mental health support.
With an ever increasing and concerning number of young people experiencing anxiety and depression, and other mental health issues, Stop.Breathe.Think (SBT) was launched with a clear mission to support young people with fast, free, and easily accessible online counselling.
When entering details at booking, users are matched to a suitable counsellor to conduct six weekly sessions tailored to their needs. In addition to online services, the charity also has a ‘wellbeing drop-in’ service that offers 30-minutes calls with fully trained counsellors.
The idea for the SBT scheme began during the 2020 pandemic when founder Dan Charlish and his team were unable to continue to operating normal programmes and placements at their Snow Camp youth charity, and they spotted the worrying increase in the mental health issues being experienced by the young people they were supporting. Originally intended as a temporary initiative during Covid, the SBT programme quickly went from strength to strength and the pilot in Elephant and Castle and other areas across the country have shown there is a definite need for the service to continue. Dan and his team are looking to roll out the service more widely across London from September, especially to those areas with high densities of vulnerable young people.
Data collected throughout the year found that young people attended counselling primarily for anxiety (30%), depression (15%) and anger (15%), with various other issues presented, including eating problems and self-harm.
Real Estate company, Delancey, founded by Jamie Ritblat, supplied funds to launch the project in Elephant and Castle. Delancey is overseeing the redevelopment of the new Elephant & Castle town centre and is a long-time supporter of the charity running the project.
Feedback from those young people who benefitted from counselling has been positive:
“It’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and that someone has finally listened and understood me and helped me.”
“Genuinely thank you for this support, I am very grateful to have been able to receive help and I hope that this can be the start to becoming a better me! Thank you for everything.”
Dan Charlish, Founder and CEO, Stop.Breathe.Think. said:
“Our relationship with Delancey goes back many years, and once again we are grateful for their support to help us launch this initiative in Elephant and Castle. Finding the mental health support they need is a huge challenge for many young people, and SBT is able to provide this support quickly and effectively. We have a big vision to scale the service over coming years and we have learnt so much through delivering this pilot programme. Huge thanks to Delancey for all their support.”
