Lewis was seventeen when he sat down in one of our workshops for the first time. He'd come along because his school counsellor had mentioned it and he had, as he puts it now, 'nothing else on that Tuesday afternoon.' He wasn't expecting much. He'd heard the word 'wellbeing' enough times in school assemblies to have developed a mild allergy to it.
What he found instead was a room full of people his own age, a facilitator who didn't talk to them like children, and a conversation about something nobody had ever discussed with him directly: what happens to your mental health when the structure of school disappears and you're left to build your own routine from scratch.
That's a pattern we see consistently in our work. The anxieties that accumulate for school leavers are often administrative as much as emotional — the small practical unknowns that nobody explains because everyone assumes someone else already has. Lewis went on to attend four more sessions over the following two months, covering topics from managing sleep and screen time to understanding what a payslip deducts and why, to what 'stepping up to adult mental health services' actually means in practice.
By the time he left Perth to start a hospitality apprenticeship in Dundee last autumn, he says he felt like a different person — not because his anxiety had vanished, but because he had language for it and a set of actions to reach for.
'I called NHS 24 one night in October when I was really struggling. Before the workshops I genuinely didn't know I was allowed to do that. I thought it was for emergencies. I didn't know that feeling like you can't cope is an emergency.'
— Lewis, former participant, now Peer Connector volunteer
Lewis is back in Perth for the summer, working at a hotel on the High Street and saving for a flat. He's volunteered to speak to this year's intake of workshop participants — not as an expert, but as someone who sat in the same chair not very long ago and found it more useful than he'd expected.
We share his story because it reflects something we believe deeply at Vibrant Health Advocates – Gamma: that the most powerful thing we can offer young people isn't information alone, but permission. Permission to take their own mental health seriously. Permission to ask for help before things reach a crisis point. Permission to not already know everything about adult life at the age of seventeen.
If you're a school leaver in Perth — or a parent, teacher, or youth worker supporting one — our next workshop series begins in August. Sessions are free, informal, and open to all. You don't need to be struggling. You just need to be curious about how to look after yourself well.
And if you're a little further along the road — like Lewis — and you're interested in becoming a Peer Connector yourself, we'd love to hear from you. Training takes twelve hours and happens across two days. It's the kind of thing that looks good on a CV, but more importantly, it's the kind of thing that actually means something.
