Healthy Relationships
Guiding young people to identify healthy behaviours and respond to potentially harmful ones.
It may seem like everyone else has the perfect relationship, but in fact more than half of millennials say they make it appear to others that their relationship is happier than it really is. The pressure of perfectionism is a clear driving factor for the confusion around what makes a relationship healthy.
The definition of abusive relationships is no longer limited to instances of domestic violence. A third of all teenagers say that they’ve seen violence against women and girls being promoted online or via social media.
The dynamics and definitions of relationships in younger generations is changing too.
- 33% of young people feel that their relationships are not represented in mainstream media.
- 67% of young people want to see more honest representations than those idealised versions.
Brook wanted to promote some needed reeducation around relationships (of all types), so that those working with young people can be the needed shoulder of support and offer confident advice when things stray off track.
Our Approach
Before we began, we need to reeducate ourselves around young people’s discourse and concerns or challenges in relationships today.
This research formed our opening module, giving context to how young people view and form relationships, in all areas of life.
It’s true that young people are reframing what relationships mean in a way that looks different to generations before them, particularly in a landscape when more diverse gender and sexual identities are embraced.
We decided to take a deep dive into the diverse types of relationships young people are engaging in, the representations of this in media, external factors and values that influence relationship success, the impact of the pandemic and challenges of social media pressures.
We then guided the learner through what makes a relationship ‘healthy’ – Let’s face it, without this knowledge, anyone is less likely to be able to identify an unhealthy one.
This was followed with the characteristics of an unhealthy relationship including some of today’s warning signs like ‘love bombing’, ‘negging’, ‘breadcrumbing’ and ‘gaslighting’.
From unhealthy, we took a further step into the signs and impact of abusive relationships, both in a domestic and online setting – something that is extremely topical right now.
Some situations can appear healthy, unhealthy or abusive at first glance but when more is explained they could be the opposite. To encapsulate this grey area around defining relationships, we produced an interactive module for users to reflect on specific relationship behaviours to get them actively questioning their own analysis.
Finally, we looked at how to process the emotionally vulnerable experience of break ups in a healthy way. Something that teachers can really help to support young people navigate.
This course was packed full of interactions, young people’s voices, bold visuals, reflective opportunities and super helpful signposting. It’s a needed conversation in today’s relationship and sex education curriculum. Something that is often overlooked.
But in a world where young people are navigating diverse gender and sexual identities, ongoing social media pressures, facing wide-spread online abuse, and increasing incidence of domestic abuse, driven by toxic external influences such as Andrew Tate – learning about relationships could not be more essential.
Just as we have seen in Netflix’s ground-breaking and topical drama Adolescence, today’s young people may experience abuse online or via social media in so many different and evolving ways.
Brook’s new digital learning resource on Healthy Relationships (now live on Brook Learn), is specifically designed to equip educators with the knowledge, confidence, and skills to deliver great lessons around relationships. It’s a needed guide to teach our younger generations of what a healthy relationship looks and feels like. Supporting them to build healthy and fulfilling connections as they move into adulthood.
