- Mental health conversations in Kenyan schools remain essential.
- Parents, the government, the community and individuals have a share in escalating the conversation.
- Round Table Wellness Foundation is among the initiatives concerned about mental health among students and communities.
Mental health, just like physical health, is a vital aspect of the well-being of all of us regardless of age, gender, religion, occupation, or geographical location.
However, just like in most African countries, mental health was ignored in Kenya for a long time.
Myths, cultural beliefs and connotations associated mental illnesses with spirituality, and prayers replaced medical care.
Some took mental disorders for witchcraft, and evil spirits, secluding the mentally unwell.
Globalization made it look like a Westernized agenda, especially on the mental health component of psychosocial intervention.
Against this backdrop, the mental health agenda remained unaddressed, stigmatized, and victimized.
The ripple effect was minimal policy interventions, widening data gaps, and government non-funding, leaving people to die silently.
Mental health and statistics
HIV prevalence, hard economic times, covid-19 pandemic, and rapid modernization have destabilized the human ecosystem, increasing mental health problems.
The youth bear the weightier burden, with data showing that globally, one out of seven 10-19-year-olds experiences a mental disorder, translating to 13% of the global disease burden affecting this age group.
Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among the youth.
Kenya’s prevalence of mental sickness cases among 10-24-year-olds, who form 60% of the Kenyan population, is 10.3%.
In Kenya’s schools
These statistics usher me into discussing the mental health situation in Kenya’s schools.
Youth aged 10 to 24 are adolescents and young adults in primary and secondary schools, Higher learning institutions, and some at entry-level jobs.
The afore-discussed background clearly shows that our youths in schools need safe spaces and environments where psychological wellness can thrive.
However, we have witnessed situations getting us unawares.
High numbers of depression, anxiety, substance and drug abuse, and eating disorders have been reported, with indicators being body self-harm, suicide, and murder cases, among others.
We have seen rampant cases of school unrest where students have attacked their teachers and burnt down school property, endangering their own and friends’ lives.
Other indicators include teenage pregnancies —a clear pointer of involvement in unhealthy sexual acts; school dropouts, and increased numbers of STDs & HIV/AIDS infections, drug and substance abuse notwithstanding.
Investigating the pain-points
Probes point out that some of the major causes of youngsters’ mental turmoil emanate from exposure to adversity that has remained unattended, so the affected young ones never healed.
Such may include the loss of a parent, terminal illness, HIV/AIDs effects on a family, domestic clashes, or poverty-stricken upbringing.
Pressure to conform to peers in appearance, performance, or financially also triggers mental imbalances.
Unguided identity exploration also topples young people’s mental stability, just as negative media influence, sexual violence, bullying, physical, emotional, and other forms of gender-based violence.
Additionally, today’s youth usually study under the parent’s and society’s pressure for excellence and lofty expectations, leaving no room for failure and suppressing their mental well-being.
All these befall our adolescents in schools.
By itself, adolescence is a unique formative stage of development where young ones experience emotional, physical and social changes exposing them to mental disturbances.
The other elephant in the room is the controversial issue of LGBTQ+, which has also infiltrated the youngsters, diversely stealing their mental calmness.
Do schools have trained counselors?
For years, Kenya has neglected the mental wellness conversation, just as in many other African countries, till its effects became unignorable any longer.
Kenyan schools, therefore, survive with inadequate and partially-trained personnel, including counselors who are not capacity-built and equipped to handle the mental health agenda of students effectively.
This means that at school, the troubled young minds usually lack solace and a safe space to share their woes.
All the policies, frameworks, and efforts must be multisectoral, covering all areas and every Kenyan, including schools.
Combating the menace
Sadly, most of these psychological troubles start at home in the family and community setup, not at school.
The family unit must rise and take mental health weightily, with parents creating safe spaces for children to grow physically, mentally, and in character.
They must be part of the values foundation-building for their children, rebuking them yet with love, being present for consultation, keeping their children off their marital wrangles and teaching them to trust the process by shunning instant gratification.
It’s upon parents to teach their children on handling rejection and competition. They must look out for their children’s welfare and seek professional intervention wherever they see signs of mental distress.
At school
Learning institutions should embrace peer-to-peer counseling for youngsters to share, think through and solve their psychological challenges.
They also need guidance and counseling structures with such personnel, tools of work and stigma-free, safe spaces that encourage the affected to seek support confidently.
Creating internal mental health frameworks would also make help available for students.
Schools should have mental health stakeholder management structures that incorporate students, parents, mental health professionals, and other relevant stakeholders. This would support end-to-end promotive, preventive, curative, and rehabilitative approaches to mental health.
Teachers heading the guidance and counseling department should be trained and capacity-built occasionally for emerging mental health issues.
Kenya’s learning institutions also need budgets responsive to mental health.
Schools should embrace continuous advocacy, championing, and information sharing with all students on mental health.
Schools must create a safe environment free from bullying, unhealthy competition, exerting too much and rapid pressure on academic excellence, harsh learner-handling by teachers, the excessive power of student leaders, and, importantly, school management must create environments that embrace diversity and inclusion where students differences are actually celebrated and together form a whole.
At the communities
It is now time for communities to shun discriminative beliefs that stigmatize those mentally struggling.
Community leadership must create safe spaces to talk about mental health in their community meetings and by forming small support groups to share life skills.
Mental health champions should steer such groups.
Communities need to be informed and given information on mental health support channels.
Government’s role
While the sting continues to hurt Kenya’s population, research reveals that mental health has been allocated only 0.01% of the entire budget over the years.
More financing of the health sector, specifically the mental health faculty, is key to curbing the many deaths and professionally catering for the many troubled minds.
Continuous training and capacity building of professionals is also key. In February this year, Kenya School of Government, in collaboration with Ministry of Public Service launched the Mental Health Champions initiative at KICC, Nairobi, commissioning over 400 mental health champions.
The state should also implement the available policies, action plans and expert recommendations from reports on mental health.
These include the Kenya 2015-2030 Mental Health Policy, the Kenya 2014-2030 Health Policy, Vision 2030, and the Kenyan Constitution 2010, which gives a framework and roadmap for the mental health agenda.
Establishing more mental health centers in every county, training more personnel for the task, and involving grassroots volunteers and community members in data-gathering for earlier identification and assisting of mentally troubled individuals stands essential as never before.
Role of Education Ministry
The Ministry of Health needs to collaboratively work with the Ministry of Education. This way, end-to-end structures will enable students to access help when needed.
The guidance and counseling teachers need training and capacity building to be able to handle mental health cases effectively and efficiently in schools.
The Ministry of Education needs mental health-responsive budgets.
There is a need for infrastructural development that is free from stigma and discrimination; the designated centers must embody the confidentiality of the affected students.
Roundtable Wellness Foundation
I am a beneficiary of the government’s efforts to train, and capacity-build officers in public service on mental health.
I was trained in 2021 and certified as a mental health champion in a program commissioned by former president Uhuru Kenyatta, through the Ministry of Public Service and implemented collaboratively with the Kenya School of Government.
From that program, I was awakened to the need to use the knowledge and skills gained to support my colleagues in public service then.
I created mental health structures and activated internal training sessions and safe spaces to share on mental health alongside other programs.
With the onset of covid-19, which triggered GBV, teenage pregnancies, school dropouts, and shocking numbers of suicide cases, I reached out to my colleagues that we had been trained together.
We agreed to have a mental health round table discussion on how to support our community.
Over time, many professionals joined. Our discussions led to the formation of Roundtable Wellness Foundation.
We focus on mental health promotion and prevention and link up the affected to mental health professionals for curative and rehabilitative services. Ours is a safe platform to share, advocate and voice out on mental health.
We advocate for, train and capacity-build on mental health-sensitive policy formulation and implementation.
So far, we have had several mental health outreaches to mentally vulnerable groups like the students, police force, women and girls, and our brothers and sisters in prison.
I am a leadership and organizational development practitioner, good Leadership & Governance advocate, a mediator and a counselor.
Serving my community
I champion diversity and inclusion, transformative youth, women and girls development through Gusii Women in Leadership Network (GWILN) platform and the Role Modelling Initiative by Edinah Kangwana.
In all these initiatives, I have incorporated mental health agenda.
To the government
I urge the government to enact and implement the right policies on mental health, to have a mental health-responsive budget, train and capacity-build more mental health professionals and activate community mental health champions and community volunteers.
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Getting the correct statistics early enough is also vital for timely action. There should also be a one-stop shop between government ministries led by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of education at the centre, to escalate the mental health conversation among students.
