This archive report was first published on 18 November 2019.
As we prepare to mark World Children's Day, it is imperative to acknowledge the alarming state of children's mental healthcare in our country. According to Unicef, up to 20 percent of adolescents globally experience mental disorders, with suicide being the leading cause of death among 15-19-year-olds worldwide.
Monday, November 18, 2019
The 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey reveals a bottom-heavy population, with half of it below the age of 20. This demographic calls for working structures that guarantee mental health and well-being of the people. However, preparations to mark World Children's Day seem to be neglecting the critical discourse on children's mental health.
Leaders must critically evaluate if we are moving closer to a level where every child is in school and learning, safe from harm, and able to fulfill their potential. We live in an era where life puts pressure on everyone, regardless of age, and children are the most vulnerable due to their delicate developmental processes.
Risks such as child-unfriendly exposure to technology, family tensions, conflict, instability, peer rejection, and humiliation must be reduced. The existence of early warning signs must also be detected. The success of fee-free education and the government education policy of annual 100 percent transition brings a challenge in effectively reaching out to children in the school setting.
Cases of emotional and mood disorders, anxiety, self-harm actions, behavioral problems, and substance use can easily escape teachers' attention. This is exacerbated when capacity building of handlers of children is ineffectively minimal. A remodelling that creates a family-focused health provision and ensures a seamless parenting framework between home and school is necessary.
When there is no free communication, parents live with their children as perfect strangers, and push them over to teachers who correspondingly cannot relate to them. Such learners largely end up with fallow potential. The reality of our generational snare is obvious: overtly captured by the inanity of technology and the internet.
A neglected mental health of the children has a snowballing effect and touches not only the individual and the family but also spills over disastrously to the broader society. With devoted nurturing, predictable resourcing, and creation of multi-pronged support pathways that are proactive, whole, and accessible, we can move towards securing the future generation.
— Allan Onunga is an educator.
