MENTAL HEALTH FOCUS WEEKS​

Designed for young people who are finding the world hard to engage with

These are Monday-to-Friday residential experiences created and run by experts in each of our focuses: anxiety, depression, autism, and ADD. These weeks give a chance for young people struggling with certain disorders to learn about themselves, their condition, and how they fit into the world. Stepping outside their normal environment for a time to allow them to look at it from the outside.

Living with a mental health diagnosis can be extremely difficult, particularly in your teens. So, our courses focus on 12 to 15-year-olds who are finding it hard to engage with their education, opportunities, or social lives. We do this by bringing young people with the same diagnosis to our centre and to spend a week on single and group exercises and strategies designed to help them re-engage, on their own terms, with society.

Living with a mental health diagnosis can be extremely difficult, particularly in your teens. So, our courses focus on 12 to 15 year olds who are finding it hard to engage with their education, opportunities or social lives. We do this by bringing young people with the same diagnosis to our centre and spend a week on single and group exercises and strategies designed to help them re-engage, on their own terms, with society.

The courses contain elements of challenge, creation, reconnection with nature and sharing in a safe space, with a councillor on hand for the students at any time. Nothing is compulsory and everyone there is on a different stage of their journey.

Sometimes Know Yourself is a diving board, sometimes it’s a seed sometimes it is just the comfort of walking away with friends who are sharing the same fears and struggles – a peer support group.

For some, Know Yourself will be a diving board, for others a seed or even just a comfort blanket, walking away with  friends who are sharing the same fears and struggles; a peer support group.

What are these focus weeks?

Know Yourself: Anxiety

Anxiety disorders are an overstimulation of worry or fear. For people with this disorder, this feeling does not go away and, particularly when unaddressed, can get worse over time. The symptoms can interfere with daily activities such as self-care, schoolwork, and relationships. Anxiety is a complicated condition that ranges from communication difficulties to total disablement.

Our course focuses on:

What causes anxiety
• Will it ever go away
• Coping and communication strategies
• Limits and how to set them
• Finding control of anxiety
• Who am I
• Meta Cognition
• Finding answers in nature

Know Yourself: Depression

Depression affects around 1 in 6 people in this country at any one time*1 and can cause severe symptoms that affect how a young person feels, thinks, and handles daily activities. This can include: sleeping, eating, or attending school. It is often linked to and / or a gateway to negative behaviour patterns which can end up in a very destructive cycle for young people.

Our course focuses on:

• What is depression
• Is depression curable?
• Coping and communication strategies
• Is purpose linked to depression
• Finding control in depression
• Metacognition
• Emotional balancing
• Why we hurt the ones we love
• Positive plans for life

Know Yourself: ADD

ADHD  and ADD are conditions that affect people’s behaviour. People with ADHD can seem restless, may have trouble concentrating, and may act on impulse. It is one of the most commonly diagnosed mental illnesses in young people and be devastating to a young person’s chances in life if not addressed and understood.

Our course focuses on:

Myths and legends of ADD & ADHD
Metacognition
Emotional balancing
How nature and attention collide
Channeling my superpower
What is attention
Why do we hurt the ones we love
Recognising emotion in others
Finding a path

Know Yourself: H.F Autism

Autism is a complicated spectrum diagnosis which affects social communication and interaction skills. It often involves restricted, repetitive behaviours or interests and unusual mood or emotional reactions. Living with autism can make the world a difficult place to understand and comes in a huge variety of severities. We focus our courses on young people with High-Functioning Autism and how they can cope and interact better with the world around them.

Our course focuses on:

• Neuro-divergent / Neuro- spicy
• How to define yourself
• Should we think like they think
• What is focus
• Ways of understanding
• Recognising emotion in others
• How does autism feel in the natural world
• Metacognition
• Who am I
• Channeling my superpower
• Where do I fit in

group of teenagers solving a team building puzzle outside on the grass
Boy sat on the top of a mountain pointing out at the view
boy chatting to the camera as he's being interviewed about his residential experience. He's sat on a bunch with welsh fields and sheep as his backdrop

PRICES & dates

Our prices include:

– Accommodation in our bunkhouse
– 24/7 pastoral care
– 3 home-cooked meals a day
– All activities & workshops
– Support from specialists
– Internal transport throughout the week

RESIDENTIALS WILL BE RUNNING MAY & JUNE 2024. Exact weeks tBC.

5 DAYS / 4 NIGHTS = £450

+ Up to £100 to travel to and from the centre if the y.p can not be brought and picked up. This will be calculated on an individual basis depending on their location and number of students arrving from the same area.

NB: These courses are referral only; we accept referrals from mental health professionals, schools &  other registered organisations. Referrals direct from parents are only considered in exceptional circumstances.

Courses are often co-funded by the referring organisation and parent / guardian and in some circumstances we can take on the cost. This will be discussed after the referral has been made and accepted.

Please use our form below if you have a young person in mind.

REFERRAL FORM

This form is for initial registration of the interest of a young person in the Know Yourself schemes. It does not constitute an application to the scheme and there is no commitment by either side.

Please provide a direct line to contact, not a general school number. Referrals that cannot be contacted will not be processed. We will only call regarding your referral.

We can accept those without an official diagnosis but an investigation will be made to ensure they are suitable for the scheme.

+44 1550 740452

Tyr Abad
Residential Centre
Tirabad, Powys
LD4 4DS Wales

Email 
info@arc-adventures.com

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to go on this trip, and nothing feels the same. I feel I’ve grown mentally and physically, and I spend more time with myself now trying to continue building myself, but it’s not the same. My journal from this week has become something super important to me, as well as my medallion. I bring it to school with me now, just in my bag. It’s given me motivation to speak more, and I think it’s going pretty well.

So yeah, I don’t have any criticism really. This was the best thing to happen to me in years.

Tallulah
Aged 15
Dagon Residential

This place is something else, if I could I would trade in my Xbox to be able to stay here every night.

Charlie
Aged 13
Activity Camp Guest