Singer has caring in mind

To mark Children’s Mental Health Week, which began on Monday (6 February), pop artist and counsellor LILY-JO, who helps children to look af ter their mental health through her music, talks about the emotional challenges facing young people and the book she has written to equip carers for conversation

Interview by Sarah Olowofoyeku

LILY-JO goes from stages to school classrooms, using her music and offering practical resources to help a generation improve their wellbeing. The Manchesterbased pop artist and counsellor grew up surrounded by music, having had parents and grandparents who were all in bands. She studied performing arts at college, and later got a job in a modelling agency. After the birth of her first child she wanted a job with more stability, so she retrained as a counsellor. But later she felt she needed to write songs again, and she was given the opportunity to perform them when she was signed to a label.

‘At my first gig, back in 2016, I talked from the stage about being a counsellor and sang my songs,’ she says. ‘Afterwards I had a queue of people at the merchandise table sharing their stories of mental ill health and sayings that what I had said on stage really helped them. I wondered if there was a way I could fuse my music with my counselling experience, and in that moment the Lily-Jo Project was born.’

Lily-Jo wanted to use her name so that people could see her performing live and then be connected back to her website of mental health resources. For the past seven years the website has been offering tools, tips, podcasts and blogs to help people overcome

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Her decision to become a counsellor came about as a result of her own experience of mental ill health.

‘After a family trauma, I felt very low,’ she says. ‘My mum suggested I have some counselling, and it helped me. I realised it was something I could be helping others with.’

Now she has written a book, Talking to Children about Mental Health, which she began to work on after receiving a lot of questions from parents about how they should go about doing it.

‘I had some time over lockdown,’ she says, ‘and I felt like it would be a powerful way of me making a difference in this world. Knowing that children and young people are struggling motivated me to write and get the tools into the hands of the people that need them the most. Our teachers might not be equipped to deal with the mental health struggles of this next generation, but they’re expected to and that feels unfair. So I feel us experts need to step up and provide as many resources as we can for teachers, parents and anyone that is working with children and young people.’

The book features uplifting and reflective lyrics from songs that Lily-Jo has written and its chapters address some of the issues that affect young people today, including climate anxiety, global grief, post-pandemic stress and life lived online.

We need to create boundaries for our children

Lily-Jo says: ‘Constantly being informed that the world will end soon can have a negative impact on children’s wellbeing. Also, our children now can hear about things happening across the world before we know about them. They are grieving and witnessing things online that we need to be aware of, and we need to be able to support them as they grieve.’

To help children navigate online digital spaces, Lily-Jo suggests that adults should have open conversations with them about the internet and set boundaries. She says that when her son got his first phone, she scrolled through a social media feed with him to talk about advertising on the internet.

‘We came across a body spray advert, and I asked him what he thought the advertiser was trying to say to him. And he said: “That if I spray this spray, I will be more attractive.” Helping children to decipher what they are being sold is key.

‘I also think we need to create boundaries for our children’s digital and online presence, which we can do through having phone-free zones in the home. In our home, we have no phones at the dinner table.’

One of the most important things to remember about helping children with their mental health, she says, is that people need to be present and available for them.

This week is Children’s Mental Health Week, which Lily-Jo believes is important because it highlights to adults that children need support.

‘When we shine a spotlight on that, we can help the next generation,’ she says. ‘As adults, teachers, grandparents, aunties and uncles, we have the responsibility to make sure that our children’s mental health is good. This week encourages us to spot the warning signs and act upon them. Fifty per cent of mental health problems are developed by the age of 14, so if we understand that, we can provide preventative tools to nip them in the bud.’

Lily-Jo also wants people to be aware that everyone needs to know how to look after their mental wellbeing. She says that older generations sometimes struggle with such ideas because talking about mental health is a new concept.

‘Mental health was like an illness, so older generations were not given the vocabulary or the knowledge about how the brain works, which we have now. They can be encouraged that they are a hugely resilient generation who have pulled up their socks and gotten on with it, but what we’re saying now is that they can talk about things and feel better, get help and take appropriate medication if needed.

‘I see patients in their early 50s who are dealing with stuff from childhood that they just suppressed, but it has come out in other ways – for example, migraines, backache or irritability.’

Lily-Jo says that she has been helped in her life by her Christian faith.

‘Faith keeps me grounded,’ she says. ‘It gives me an anchor, which allows me to work out my God-given purpose.’

The Bible includes teaching that encourages people to be childlike, and Lily-Jo thinks adults can learn from the younger generation.

‘Children are delightful,’ she says. ‘They have no preconceived ideas. They are blank slates who can cause so much joy. I believe children are kind and generous. They can see the joy and beauty in things that, as adults, we can miss. Looking as children, we get to look at things through God’s eyes. If you take a toddler out for a walk, they say: “Wow, there’s a squirrel and there’s a dog and look at that lovely blue sky.” We can learn from children to take the pressure off. To see things from their perspective is to see them in their purest form.’

Despite the many challenges facing younger and older people in the world today, Lily-Jo is hopeful that positive change can come about.

‘If we can all work on ourselves and aim to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be, we’ll generally be happier people and then be happier people to the children in our care.’ l Talking to Children about Mental Health is published by SPCK

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jBecoming a Christian

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