In the second of our blogs on the power of validation, our Senior Youth Involvement in Research Manager Rachel draws on research to share advice on how – and how not – to validate young people.
Rachel Kimberley Temple
As a young adult, I know from experience how a trip to the doctors for my mental health – that I have had to psych myself up for – can be make or break, depending on whether I feel validated.
I know how stressful it can be to have to do my research before attending my appointment and prepare what to say, what to avoid saying, in the hopes of being taken seriously this time. When you are invalidated, it can feel like you are on trial – because in this scenario, that professional is the gatekeeper between you and the support that you need.
In this second blog of our validation series, we talk about how to meaningfully validate young people’s mental health experiences.
What is the power of validation?
Young people need to feel validated. We know through our research that one of the most important areas where they need to feel validated is their mental health.
One of the most important ‘validators’ for young people are mental healthcare professionals.
Sometimes the act of validating a young person – recognising how they feel and assuring them that how they feel matters – can be more powerful than treatment itself. At the very least, it is usually an invitation to open and explore the matter further.
We certainly saw this across our Agency and Agency-in-practice projects, where we found that validating young people’s experiences was the crucial component for a positive mental health interaction.
Together with young people, clinicians, philosophers and researchers, we watched videos of young people being assessed in emergency departments for mental health crisis support.
The data got us discussing what a ‘helpful vs unhelpful’ mental health interaction looks like for young people. Together we came up with ‘the agential stance’, which is basically a recipe book for enabling young people to feel supported when they seek help for their mental health.
One of the major five ingredients is validating the young person.
Validating the young person’s experiences sits at the bottom of the ladder; it is the very first step in supporting the young person before the ‘climb’ can be continued – to provide the young person with a safe space to open up further, and to trust that whoever they are interacting with is really hearing them, without judgment.
They are communicating that that young person’s feelings and experiences do matter. Ultimately, if this crucial first step is missed, the conversation could quickly shut down.
What happens is often the opposite – when many of us get up the courage to share that we’re struggling it’s invalidated by other people, even if they mean well.
How to avoid invalidating a young person
Through our research on the Agency project, we learned about different ways in which young people can feel validated.
Unfortunately what happens is often the opposite – when many of us get up the courage to share that we’re struggling it’s invalidated by other people, even if they mean well.
This can look like people dismissing or contradicting how we feel – for example saying “things aren’t so bad”, “cheer up”, or “it could be worse”.
People giving solutions when you didn’t ask for them can fall into this category too. We all know the frustration of trying to vent about a problem and the person you’re telling immediately goes into problem-solving mode.
How to validate a young person
Validating doesn’t have to mean withholding solutions completely. It’s not necessarily about completely agreeing with the person, either.
It is about recognising their experience and demonstrating to them that it is being recognised. Drawing on our learnings from the Agency work, here are some ways to validate a young person.
- Body language
When there are visual signs of active listening, the young person feels that they are being taken seriously. It might look like this:
- Verbal responses
When there are verbal signs of empathy and compassion the young person feels understood, which might look like this:
The power of fully validating a young person
Speaking on the Agency podcast Young Person’s Advisory Group member Catherine said:
“Sometimes people can validate to a certain extent, but they’ll compare experiences, so it’s like what I went through isn’t as bad. And then somebody else would try and compare their own trauma with my trauma and try to make me feel worse for feeling the way I felt, because they felt that what they’ve gone through is heavier and they have more reason to be suffering.
“And I feel like sometimes when people say, ‘oh, if I went through this experience and I got out of it, then you should be able to do that too’. But I’ve never really related to that because we don’t necessarily come from the same maybe cultural background, religious background, we don’t have the same genes. The way everyone’s brains work is very different.”
McPin team member Rosie added:
“I think it can even just be little things. Like I have a GP that I feel like I can go to, because I know that she’s going to look at me in my eyes and she’s going to listen to what I’m saying and she’s going to say, ‘I understand that must be really hard’, and like, give me that feedback.”
Matthew Broome, an academic psychiatrist from Agency, described seeing A&E consultations which felt like a courtroom:
“There’s this kind of, ‘you don’t seem to be depressed’ or ‘there doesn’t seem to be a suicidal crisis here’. And they kind of bring evidence and argue about, ‘well, you look well-dressed or you’re smiling in the waiting room, or you’ve got plans to go out this evening’.
“I think the first step we see from the young people we were working with is that this initial validation is incredibly important to feel…there’s some kind of connection or bond between you and the practitioner and there’s that kind of curiosity and recognition of the suffering and distress that’s going on.”
Listen to the Agency podcast in full below:
The bottom line
Validating a young person during mental health interactions can achieve several things: it communicates to the young person that you acknowledge their experiences and what they are going through; and it also helps them to feel like they aren’t just a problem to solve. But the value of validation isn’t just in getting support for mental health. Our next blog in the series will discuss different types of validation.
In the meantime, hear from the young people and researchers who worked on the Agency projects:
Read the first blog in the series on validation here: Why is validation so vital for young people’s mental health?
And find out more about the Agency videos here: New videos launch exploring agency in mental health interactions
