BellTIME
Our Mission:
BellTIME
TeenLine
Ireland
is the national non-directive, free telephone and mobile texting service specifically for teenagers who may be feeling alone, worried, sad or distressed.
Our Mission:
We are committed in helping improve the social and emotional health and wellbeing of all young people regardless of their race, colour, religion or sexuality by providing them with a friendly, caring, confidential, non-judgmental help line and support service.
TeenLine has visited over 100 schools all over Ireland since the school’ s awareness project was initiated a year ago and we have gained much valuable experience through interactive school talk sessions. We have regional volunteer speakers who visit schools on request and speak to students about mental health and TeenLine We have visited on an average 3 to 4 schools per week during the school year. The organisation has received positive feedback from staff, the students and teenagers calling the helpline service. A record of over 24,000 texts have been received to date in 2016, this is already a huge increase over the 12000 texts received for 2015. Over 20,000 calls were made to TeenLine so far in 2016. The number of texts that the helpline has received has increased by over a 100 %. We are regularly told by service users they got our number and details of TeenLine from the wristbands which were distributed during the school talk when we visited their school.
The most prevalent motivation for teenagers to contact our helpline service is simply to talk about an issue they felt they couldn ' t talk to anyone else about; the second most common reason to call was a
feeling of loneliness followed by relationship and sexual anxiety issues. School relationships, exams and day-to-day experiences can cause greatest anguish, prejudicial treatment by friends, family and neighbours feeds into the larger process of social exclusion and it denies young people with mental health problems their right to live a full life. It also denies us as a society the vast and rich contributions young people have to
offer. Our new outreach to Schools has helped us reach many youths across Ireland in their own schools and communities to create awareness about mental health and the free services provided by TeenLine.
TeenLine recently met with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs who is working with her officials to help TeenLine expand its service in 2017.
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