WELLBEING
WELLBEING
C
areers leaders have the potential to
play a hugely powerful and positive
role in enhancing the mental health
and wellbeing of young people, both
now and in the future. For many working with
children in a career-guidance capacity this link is
intuitive, but it has been explored and confirmed
in new research by Dr Peter Robertson, associate
professor at Edinburgh Napier University.
When young people seek careers advice, it’s
“fairly routine” that they are “feeling down and
anxious”, says Robertson: “Careers guidance is
about the future and that’s what anxiety is about
so, inevitably, careers advisers are going to see
people who are experiencing some discomfort.”
This discomfort is not just about figuring out what
they want to do with their lives, but also stems, more
generally, from the transition to adulthood. Young
people’s brains are typically going through significant
developmental changes during their teenage years.
For these reasons, effective career guidance can
deliver some of the benefits of counselling in boosting
mental health.
Effective careers guidance for young people:
• has features likely to promote wellbeing, including recognising strengths, a focus
on the future, setting achievable goals, and building a social identity through work
• resembles counselling in terms of providing one-to-one attention and a safe space
for young people to share their concerns. It may offer some of the short-term
wellbeing benefits of personal counselling
• supports access to decent work and education or training that provides a source
of income, social contact, purposeful activity and healthy challenges
• can make it more likely that work is rewarding, consistent with an individual’s
needs and values, and therefore more sustainable
• can be embedded in programmes to support unemployed young people, and is
likely to complement psycho-educational interventions to promote resilience
• can result in at-risk young people being referred to public mental
health interventions
Source: The impact of career guidance on the mental wellbeing of young people
Read the full report: bit.ly/ImpactOfCareerGuidance
Promoting positive wellbeing
“It’s not symptom-focused and it’s not meant to be
therapy, but some things that are a natural part of
careers guidance are also part of promoting positive
wellbeing,” explains Robertson.
“You’re sitting down with someone, taking an
interest and trying to help them solve problems
and imagine a future which is better than the
present. You’re injecting a bit of optimism and
getting people to look at their strengths, rather
than mulling over the negatives.”
The act of coming up with a plan, with clear
goals, helps to combat a sense of powerless
and gives young people a feeling of control
and agency in their lives. As well as these
short-term benefits, the process itself can
be beneficial in the long term because it
gives young people a way to role model
future career transitions and to build up
resilience to change.
Robertson stresses the significance
securing a “positive destination”
has on young people in the crucial
months after they leave school and,
potentially, later in life.“Brains are
s h a p e d by ex p e r i e n c e s a s
teenagers,” he says. “There is
evidence that if you’re unemployed
for six months as a teenager then
there are some really long-term
impact s both on earning
potential but also on health. If
you feel ‘nobody wants me’ that
can become crystallised in
your brain.”
This could explain why
people who are NEET (not in
employment, education or training) are particularly
vulnerable to mental health problems.
Another valuable action careers leaders can take,
which will help young people prepare for the rapidly
changing world of work, is to emphasise that decisions
made now are not set in stone; it’s quite alright – indeed,
a strength nowadays – to experience different sectors
and develop skills in different areas.
Life is not as linear (think ‘job for life’)
as it once was.
You’re injecting
optimism and
getting people
to look at their
strengths,
rather than
mulling over
negatives
Exploring mini-careers
Jennie Cole, careers leader at
Hailsham Community College
Academy Trust in East Sussex,
reports that the majority of students
knocking on her door do so because
they don’t know what to do next. “I
always say ‘I’m not here to tell you
what you’re going to do, my job is to
help you explore the things that
might interest you’,” she says.
“I reassure them that, even if they
chose to be a bricklayer at 16 for four
years, they could absolutely change
their mind and move into another
role after this. I always reinforce that
the prediction now is that students
will have anything up to 12 different
jobs in their working life.”
De Montfort University’s Mark
FUTURE TALENTED // 35