Meet the founder
Denise Brown

I founded 4 Young Minds in October 2018 because of my early experience with anxiety and my passion for young people's mental health. This was reignited by my personal experience with a year 11 student, just a few months away from his GCSEs, who had tagged himself as a failure with suicide as the only way out.

​

I kept asking myself: how was his mental health left to deteriorate without any intervention for so long?

​

I hold a BSc in Psychology, a Level 3 Award in Education and Training, Trauma-Informed Practice training, and Youth Mental Health First Aid to support young people in accessing the appropriate support. Alongside these qualifications, my professional experience with young people spans more than a decade, with my youth work journey beginning at the Prince’s Trust in my role as a Fairbridge Programme Executive.  Here I supported some of the hardest to reach and most vulnerable young people aged 16-25 through 1:1 mentoring and life skills workshops.

​

Mentoring young people aged 11-16 in schools have shown me the urgent need for preventative measures to break down the crippling stigma around mental health by encouraging young people to seek help before it is too late. With so many promising lives lost to suicide every year, all too often many young people suffer in silence, unaware of the support that is available to them or too ashamed to ask for help. I made it my mission to change that.