Kate Middleton Shares Importance of Children’s Mental Health Week

Kate Middleton helped make this Children’s Mental Health Week the most successful one yet. Kensington Palace via Getty Images

The Duchess of Cambridge has long been a supporter and patron of children’s mental health and education, and to highlight Children’s Mental Health Week, Kate Middleton took to social media and video calls to help make it the most successful one yet.

Kate has been the Royal Patron of Place2Be, a children’s mental health charity that provides counseling and emotional support to children and teachers, since 2013, and she helped launch the first-ever Children’s Mental Health Week in 2015.

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Duchess Kate started out the week with a selfie video (her first ever!) she shared on the Kensington Royal social media platforms, in which she spoke about the importance of parental mental health, too, especially amid the COVID-19 crisis. She encouraged parents and caregivers to make sure they look out for their own wellbeing, in order to be able to help care for children and their emotional health.

She also spoke one-on-one with teachers from Ribbon Academy in County Durham this week, to check in on how they’re doing amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Duchess chatted one-on-one with teachers. Kensington Palace via Getty Images

She thanked the teachers for all they’ve done throughout the pandemic, and highlighted how much they do for children both in non-COVID times and during lockdown. She told them to make sure they’re looking out for their own wellbeing, and told one of the teachers, Chris Reay, “I want to say a massive thank you to teachers across the country. You’re doing a fantastic job. It’s been really, really hard work. But please look after yourselves.”

Earlier this week, Kensington Palace’s social accounts shared art made by students at Ribbon Academy; it was part of a Children’s Mental Health Week initiative with Place2Be, in which the students expressed themselves via these drawings.

Duchess Kate’s support helped make Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week the most successful yet, as according to Vanity Fair, Place2Be said that there have seen “record numbers” of children and parents taking an interest in the initiative, with a 700 percent increase in website traffic from last year. Catherine Roche, the CEO of Place2Be, told Vanity Fair that the organization is “incredibly grateful to our Patron for her support, as the Duchess has had an “enormously positive impact.”

Kate’s been using her new home office set-up at Queen Elizabeth’s Sandringham estate in order to complete work calls; it’s just a few minutes away from Anmer Hall, where she and Prince William have been spending lockdown with their children. Over the past few months, Duchess Kate has become a rather skilled at Zoom and is much more confident in front of the camera—she even has influencer-approved lighting.