A WORLD champion Thai boxer is sharing her tips to develop a healthy mind with youngsters.

Rachael MacKenzie has helped launch a new programme to help youngsters in Bury look after their mental health.

Figures show that one in 10 children and young people have diagnosable mental health conditions —three children in a classroom of 30.

Athletes like Rachael will mentor children as part of a new mentally healthy schools pilot, developed by the region-wide Health and Social Care Partnership.

More than 30 schools, primary and secondary, are trialling the programme, which was launched at Heathfield Primary School in Bolton. Rachael said:”I’ve been an athlete mentor for the Youth Sport Trust for over 10 years and have seen a shift in the young people that we are working with towards declining emotional and mental health, as well as some of the physical changes that we see that are not positive. I absolutely feel passionately that what I have learned through sport really is transformational for young people.”

The programme is part of multi-million pound investment in mental health in Greater Manchester and it will run for six months with plans to roll it out to all schools in the region, who will have access to specialist resources and provide training for teachers in helping develop mental health wellbeing.

Dr Sandeep Ranote, children’s mental health lead for Greater Manchester, described the scheme as a ‘first’.

She said”This is about support, awareness, advice information and a programme that is for teaching staff and for young people.

“It’s about a programme delivering a toolkit so if you are at school in Bolton or at a school in Oldham or at a school in Trafford, it doesn’t matter where you are you have the right to access the same level and same quality of support around health and wellbeing.

“Prevention is really important — building that resilience However, its also very important to recognise mental illness is a real illness and some young people will need to access the right care and support and so we have within that pilot a specialist team that will actually be directly providing support and advice to our schools to rapidly access the right services.”

Zulfi Jiva, who is also the mental health lead for the Greater Manchester partnership, said: “We do get a lot of children who get worried and whose stress levels increase at exam time, and we need to manage that and to ensure that does not translate into a longer term issue for those children. If we manage this well now we can help prevent them from getting ill in the future especially in terms of further pressures.”