Healthy coping strategies: video for young people

Young people will go through a lot of changes during adolescence, and these aren’t always easy to deal with. They may experience intense emotions and find these difficult to manage.

Having tried and tested coping strategies to deal with intense and difficult emotions is an important skill for young people.

In this video, Anna Freud Centre clinician Hannah Woods discusses the importance of healthy coping strategies for mental health.

She then demonstrates three different types of coping strategy:

• A grounding exercise
• A breathing exercise
• A CBT-style reframing thoughts activity

The video also features Sophie, a young person who explains how her chosen coping strategy, visualisation or guided imagery, helps her.

Using this resource

This resource is designed for:

• use by young people aged 14 and up
• use by individual young people

Staff could share this video with students to watch in their own time, or could play it to a small group of students during tutor or form time.