Forum urges parents to pay attention to children’s mental health

 

Participants at a Care and Support Conference for Mental Health to commemorate the 2021 World Mental Health Day have called on parents and guardians to pay attention to the mental health of their children.

The conference was organised in Lagos by an NGO, Across All Initiative for Mental Health and Stigma Eradication, with the theme: “Mental Health Care For All”.

The participants said that parents have vital roles to play in ensuring that children have stable or balanced mental health status.

A psychotherapist, Mrs Dedoyin Ajayi, urged parents to be sensitive enough to understand and know when their children were undergoing emotional stress or depression to render necessary support, advice and assistance.

Ajayi said that could be achieved if there exist a good communication relationship between the parents and their children.

She said research showed that most young people who had strong ties with their parents and families were significantly less likely to engage in risky behaviours.

According to her, parents are the first line of defence in the successful efforts to prevent any child from developing mental health conditions.

“If a parent is close or friendly with his or her child, having established a good relationship with the child, such parent will be able to know when the child is going astray or undergoing emotional mental feelings like depression, anxiety, anger or stress,” she said.

Mrs Akhere Akran, Founder, Agatha Obiageli Aghedo Memorial Foundation, said that parents should monitor and guide their children to shield them from deviant behaviours.

According to her, correcting, training and monitoring are inevitable in the upbringing of a child, advising that they should be done with love.

“Parent should create time for their children as many parents are too busy to render adequate parental-care to their children.

“As a parent, you have to be involved in their lives, but avoid being a “helicopter” parent who is smothering or over -protective,” she said.

Akran advised parents to know what their children watch or listen to on the social media and make informed choices for them to avoid being mislead.

Mrs Amaka Kama, a Fitness Consultant, urged parents to desist from criticising and comparing their children with others, saying every child is different.

According to her, parents should be supportive of the ideas and ambitions of their children and guide them on certain things which can affect their mental health positively.

“If a child says he or she wants to be a musician or a sportsman; all you need do as a parent is to encourage and support him.

“Eventually, children have to make choices for themselves; if parents lend appropriate advice and act as positive role models, they can influence the choices their children make,” she said.

Mr Seun Dosunmu, the Executive Director of the NGO, appealed to the government to subsidise the treatment of mental illness, train and employ more mental health practitioners to enhance access to mental health services in Nigeria.

Dosunmu lamented that many people at the community level do not have access to mental health services and called for development of mental health delivery at the grassroot.

“Most mental health cases happen in rural communities where there are no mental healthcare facilities or psychiatric hospitals.

“That is why people will resort to taking victims to prayer houses where the situation will be allowed to get complicated.

“Let the government subsidise the treatment of mental illness, establish more psychiatric hospital to enable more mental patients access treatment.

“This would go a long way to increase access to mental healthcare and prevent mental cases from degenerating and making them difficult to treat or manage,” he said.