This year has witnessed news of children dying through school fires, road accidents, and domestic violence.
By the time the news breaks, the young victims have lost lives, suffered various degrees of injuries, are traumatised or stigmatised from being exposed to extreme violence and other tragic experiences.
The recent fire at Hillside Endarasha Academy, Nyeri County, where 21 minors lost their lives, and several were injured, spells out the need to extend mental health support to the survivors, and to children in general.
As the world faces more crimes, and increased disasters related to climate change or human activities, the media should inform and educate on their effects on children’s physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.
Societies up to recently assumed children did not understand the magnitude of community suffering where they lived, and thought these occurrences had very little if any emotional impact on them.
In any case, it’s adults who carried the highest degree of social responsibility, thus were the ones expected to suffer emotionally from disasters.
However, with advanced psychosocial research involving social, occupational and clinical psychologists, science has established that children at different stages of development get negatively affected when unfortunate incidences strike a society.
The media should frequently highlight research findings on child welfare by giving professionals a platform to offer advice on how to treat children in grieving situations, at both communal and family level.
Children, with their delicate sensibility and sensitivity could turn to violence, one of the anti-social behaviours, as an easy way to express their anger, frustrations and experienced negative behaviour growing up without anyone to share their emotions with.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), children react to stressful experiences in different ways. Common reactions include physical symptoms like headaches and stomach aches, fear and worry, difficulty sleeping and nightmares, and difficulty concentrating. Some children may engage in aggressive behaviours, others may be socially withdrawn.
In 2021, at the height of Covid-19 pandemic, Unicef published a report on the mental health of children, adolescents and caregivers, and called for commitment, communication and action as part of a comprehensive approach to promote good mental health for every child.
The media should leverage such vital research to constantly inform and educate communities on the need to put children’s welfare at the fore front.
Further, Unicef in an article published in its website on May 4, 2023 titled, ‘Protecting children’s mental health in emergency settings’,states “[w]hile a physical injury is immediately visible, a mental wound can sometimes remain invisible and, consequently, children’s mental health issues may remain undetected and under-prioritised in conflict-affected settings”.
It further states: “For children, emergency situations can be even more traumatic and put them at risk of long-term mental health problems. The provision of child protection services and psychosocial support, is therefore vital.”
While Kenya has child rights and behavioural experts, media mostly interviews them when incidents such as domestic violence happen, other selective times being such as the recent fires in schools.
The media should make it a regular engagement with the professionals, as much information remains unexposed concerning child welfare, including laws that need to be amended to align child welfare with modern reality.
