Best of the Web: Hamish Blake opens up about mental health, in a must-see video for teenagers

The ABC has stepped up to deliver valuable resources to help Australians with their mental health, in a period when we’ve had to cope with drought, bushfires and now the pandemic. Among the resources are video monologues delivered by prominent Australians, including Hamish Blake, Steph Tisdell and Benjamin Law.

Blake’s message to his teenage self is powerful and reassuring for teens who might be struggling. He talks about his troubled teenage years that led to him being ‘asked’to leave a school, and how he found himself and his people. Click on the link below to watch the video, and find out more about the ABC’s resources here.

(Tanya Notley and Michael Dezuanni, The Conversation)

‘Fake news’ has become an everyday phrase, with a deluge of misinformation, making it hard for everyone to know exactly which sources to trust. New work by Australian researchers finds that young people are regular consumers of news. But they can also find it frightening, and are not questioning the source of the information. The researchers found that many young Australians are not getting formal education about news media at school, which they describe as troubling.

(Koketso Moeti, npr)

It’s the challenge all parents are facing: helping their children navigate a new, strange world where every other person is a potential threat to their health. This is an insightful piece by a mother in South Africa, a place that has had one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. She reflects on how she can protect them in a way that does not also teach them to treat people as a threat. ‘I don’t want my children to only remember to wear masks, wash their hands and keep their distance from people,’ she writes. ‘I want them to understand that this is a time when people need to show up for one another.’

(Kara Newhouse, MindShift)

Keeping a journal can help us make sense of life and our experiences and feelings. The article reports on a journal idea that has spread around the world, where students are keeping pandemic journals as part of their school work, with added benefits for their mental health. History teacher Bryan Shaw’s approach was about getting his students to develop their historical thinking skills. When schools closed because of the pandemic, he was concerned kids wouldn’t care about historical events. What if they kept a pandemic journal, where they were the historical actors?

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