Often when people look back at their child-hood, the memories are such that they create nostalgia and there is a longing to return to days that were carefree and full of fun, for the most part. However, not everyone has the same experience. According to a report unveiled on Tuesday by UNICEF, globally, 89 million boys aged 10–19 and 77 million girls aged 10–19 live with a mental disorder.
The organisation’s annual flagship report, ‘The State of the World’s Children 2021’ with the subhead: “On my mind: Promoting, protecting and caring for children’s mental health”, is the first ever to focus on this issue. It offers insight into the problems surrounding children’s mental health, raises concerns about the current scope of this predicament and the lack of attention paid to it in many countries and provides recommendations on the way forward. While it pays keen attention to the effects of COVID-19 on children’s mental well-being, the report notes that it represents just the tip of the iceberg.
The coronavirus pandemic, which forced children out of schools and basically disordered their lives, is likely to have far-reaching psychological effects that will perhaps follow them into adulthood. It would be difficult, if not impossible to quantify the bewilderment among young children and the anxiety and distress in their older peers, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic when no one could reassure them that everything was going to be alright. There were just no answers as to when they could return to school, see their friends again or play games and team sports. The sudden shift from structured lives to uncertainty about what would happen next was devastating for many adults, much less children and no doubt gave rise to hopelessness.
The report notes that aside from anxiety and depression, children also suffer from personality disorders; schizophrenia; autism; bipolar, attention deficit/hyperactivity and eating disorders among other things. Mental illness is also some-times a result of adverse childhood experiences like physical, emotional and sexual abuse, chronic neglect, extreme poverty, and stress about exam performance, among other things. One can only imagine how much more worrying over the COVID-19 pandemic aggravated the mental condition where some of these difficulties already existed and introduced stress where they did not.
Unfortunately, and this is particularly the case in undeveloped countries, children’s mental health disorders can go undiagnosed. Children have been and still are punished, sometimes severely physically abused, for ‘acting out’ when they are in fact suffering. The resulting stress and trauma only exacerbates the problem and for many of them by the time they reach adulthood, even if the mental health issue is recognised then for what it is, addressing it becomes a complex and expensive endeavour.
The worst case scenario though is when children take their own lives to escape from the crushing despondency of not being seen, heard or understood. According to the report, an estimated 45,800 adolescents die from suicide each year, equivalent to more than one person every 11 minutes. Further statistics provided indicate that suicide is the fifth most prevalent cause of death for adolescents aged 10–19; for boys aged 15–19, it is the fourth most common cause of death, after road injury, tuber-culosis and interpersonal violence and the third for girls in this age group.
Guyana has been severely impacted by this and although those in authority have taken admirable steps to deal with the issue, for the first half of this year, 30 children attempted suicide, according to figures provided by the Human Services Ministry. Also for this year to date, this newspaper has reported on three who ended their own lives. This is despite the availability of helplines and social media pages offering assistance to people in crisis.
The truth is that not enough is being done. People who die by suicide or attempt it, particularly children, possibly do not even recognise that they are in crisis. Some of them experience an anguish of despair which is so painful and overwhelming that they either want to make it go away or leave it behind. Hence their action; their cry for help.
The answer is greater commitment to mental well-being, which includes, but is not limited to, more spending on mental health. Why is it still the case that the number of psychiatrists in this country on the whole can be counted on the fingers of one hand, given the propensity for suicide among the population? We have to do better.
Among the recommendations in UNICEF’s report are finding ways to “reduce harsh parenting practices and improve children’s cognitive development” and the “careful implementation of brief, structured interventions that provide immediate responses to depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder can bolster children’s and young people’s mental health”.
As UNICEF’s Executive Director Henrietta Fore tweeted on Tuesday, “Mental health is a part of physical health – we cannot afford to continue to view it as otherwise. For far too long, we have seen too little understanding and too little investment in a critical element of maximizing every child’s potential. This needs to change.” The State of the World’s Children 2021 calls for commitment, communication and action. Our children deserve no less.
