COVID-19 unlocks attention on world mental health
Tulika is right: mental health is a big issue – just as important as physical health. This is especially true in childhood and adolescence, when we lay the foundation for our lifelong cognitive and learning ability, our emotional intelligence, and our resilience in the face of stress.
The pandemic once again highlighted the vulnerability of children and young people.
For children everywhere, COVID-19 has turned lives on its head, disrupting comforting and familiar patterns such as going to school and playing outdoors. For adolescents, lockdown has deprived them of the social and peer connections that are so important at this time of life. And for children affected by the trauma of violence, neglect, or abuse in the family, the closure ran very far behind closed doors with abusers and without the support they would normally find at school, and with their extended families and communities. COVID-19 has disrupted or halted critical mental health services in 93 percent of the countries worldwide.
These effects add to an already worrying toll. In my previous letter, I wrote about the increase in mental health disorders among 18-year-olds – a critical period about the development of a young person. Half of all mental disorders develop before the age of 15 and 75 percent by early adulthood. The majority of the 800,000 people who die by suicide each year are young people, and self-harm is the second leading cause of death among 15-19-year-old girls.
Unfortunately, too many children and young people do not seek help due to stigma and discrimination regarding abuse and mental health. Mental health is also underfunded almost everywhere and governments need to do more. Less than 1 percent of health budgets in low-income countries go to mental health.
But with children and young people facing so much mental well-being, this pandemic is also an opportunity to discuss and learn about mental health among adults and children.
What to do:
Young people like Tulika are asking for support, and we need to listen to their concerns.
Some governments are. In Bangladesh, Georgia and India, free telephone lines provide essential care and support to children. The Indian Childline received more than 92,000 calls for protection from abuse and violence in the first 11 days of the COVID-19 exclusion, an increase of 50 percent.
In Kazakhstan, which has one of the highest suicide rates among adolescents worldwide, UNICEF launched in April 2020 a platform for individualized online counseling services for adolescents, coupled with training and training for mental health specialists in the face of anxiety, stress and insecurity that by COVID-19. More than 5,000 school psychologists and mental health specialists were trained in just three months. Other programs in the country promote activities for social connection by adolescents through peer support groups and conversations with parents, which shifts mental health from stigmatized to understanding and caring while increasing advice and support.
Similarly, organizations around the world work with young people to normalize the act of mental health through proven interventions and campaigns. Time for change, for example, puts an end to discrimination on mental health in the UK by working with teachers, school administrators and students to open up conversations, address stigma and support young people.
We need to do more: countries need to provide the investment they deserve, dramatically expand mental health services and support for young people in communities and schools, and build on parenting programs to ensure that children from vulnerable families receive the support and protection they need. need at home.
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